“I am your first cousin once removed,” she informed him. “Your father and I are first cousins. If I had a child, you would be its second cousin. You may called me Cousin Araby, if you like. I hope your journey was pleasant.”
“It was tolerable,” said Carl. “I’m happy for the chance to cover this trial, though. And I thank you for making that possible.”
“Well, you’re family. I wish I could give you better lodging, but they’re packed to the rafters this week. You’ll have to make do with a cot in the stillroom, but it’s warm enough, and you’ll get full board with the paying guests, so I reckon you’ll survive the ordeal.”
“I’d sleep in the woodshed to get this assignment.”
“Well, it won’t come to that, but you may wait a long time for a bath or hot water of a morning. But I’ll see that there’s enough to eat, even if I have to get up in the middle of the night to start breakfast. I had a hired girl, but she fell pregnant and left me to do it all by myself, not that she was ever much use. I wish I could find a dependable girl to help out with the extra work for a couple of weeks, just until the extra guests leave town.”
“I know just the girl,” said Carl.
COUSIN ARABY HAD DASHED off a note of invitation at once, addressed to the Bonesteels on Ashe Mountain, and Carl had written a letter to Nora herself to accompany it. Then he walked to the post office to mail both missives so that they would go out first thing Monday morning. When he returned, Araby had supper on the big dining room table, and he ate bowls of beef stew and hunks of buttered cornbread, elbow to elbow with the other boarders. The regulars consisted of half a dozen local men, most of whom worked in the mines over the mountain in Kentucky, but there were also three other reporters, too—not so grand as the New York bunch, but still more exalted than he was.
After supper, the journalists had commandeered the little parlor in order to talk shop, and Carl had joined them, resolving to contribute very little to the discussion, because he soon learned that he was the only reporter present who had been given an audience with both the defense attorney and the prosecutor. The others had been allowed in to see Erma Morton, but she wouldn’t talk to them, either, because of her deal with the newspaper syndicate. They had to manufacture what copy they could out of descriptions of the interior of the jail, and fulsome verbal portraits of the defendant herself.
The reporters, one from Richmond and the others from Washington, didn’t seem to have any inside information, but they wanted to second-guess the lawyers and rehash the crime, perhaps in hope of finding fresh inspiration. Carl settled in the cordovan leather chair next to the coal fireplace, and tried to look more inexperienced and uninformed than he actually was. It never did any harm to let people underestimate you.
Later he would finish writing up his own notes of the afternoon interviews with the attorneys. He now realized how important they were, because they might contain material that the national reporters did not have.
THAT AFTERNOON AT THE DOOR of the courthouse, Carl and the ladies from Knoxville had stopped to ask a uniformed officer for directions to the home of the commonwealth’s attorney. The man looked doubtfully at the resolute expressions of the crusading dowagers, as if momentarily debating whose wrath he would rather face.
“Well, ladies,” he said, “if you’re looking to have a talk with him, I believe I can save you a trip. I just saw him heading up to his office a couple of minutes ago.”
Armed with directions to the prosecutor’s office, the ladies from Knoxville had marched straight to his door, demanding to hear his side of the story, and, such is the power of the upper-class Southern dowager, the lawyer actually let them in and did his best to make them understand.
Frank Schutz was a soft-spoken, earnest fellow in his mid-thirties, with a modest manner and a deferential attitude toward his visitors. Although he was working alone in his office on a Sunday afternoon, he wore a brown suit and a silk necktie. Carl wondered if he had come to the courthouse straight from church.
After a round of introductions, he ushered them into his cramped and crowded office, tidied away his pipe, ashtray, and a pile of papers, and helped the ladies to chairs facing his desk. When he learned that Carl was a journalist, his smile faded, and his manner remained cordial, but a shade more restrained. The weeks leading up to this notorious trial had taught him to be wary of reporters. He had obviously been preparing for tomorrow’s session in court, and he looked as if he had eaten little and slept less for days, but he listened attentively to their explanation of a fact-finding mission from Knoxville, waving away their apologies for disturbing him, and declaring himself only too happy to help.
Carl leaned against the wall, next to the framed University of Virginia law degree, and tried to make himself unobtrusive.
“It’s not like they’ve been telling it in those city newspapers, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Coeburn—for, no matter who else was present, people always instinctively addressed Mrs. Coeburn.
She inclined her head in a regal acknowledgment of the statement. “We shall be only too happy to hear the other side of the story, Mr. Schutz. Please go on.”
He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. He had made this statement so many times in the preceding days that he had it off by heart. “Those stories describe a place I’ve sure never been. It certainly isn’t here they’re talking about. Why, you could go over those news articles with a divining rod and not find a word of truth.”
Carl, recognizing the Twain phrase, smiled faintly, thinking that he might have found a kindred spirit here.
“What have they got wrong, then?” asked Mrs. Coeburn.
“For starters, there’s all that nonsense they wrote about there being a curfew here in Wise County. That’s just moonshine. They’re trying to say that Erma Morton’s father lit into her because she had stayed out too late, and that we are enforcing some outlandish Code of the Hills. Where do they get this stuff?”
“Trail of the Lonesome Pine?” murmured Carl, but no one paid him any mind.
The commonwealth’s attorney warmed to his topic. “I had one of those reporters ask me if we conducted our court sessions up here in Gaelic, because he had heard that we were so remote we had never learned English. Why, I told him our people got here two hundred years ago. Our ancestors fought in the American Revolution. But there are people in that fellow’s home city whose parents came over as immigrants only a few decades back, and all their children speak English already, don’t they? Why should anyone still be speaking Gaelic here? It’s sheer lunacy. People seem to lose their minds when it comes to thinking about these mountains.”
Mrs. Coeburn considered her next remark. “It is indeed unfortunate that misinformed people misjudge you, but surely you must admit that the attitude toward women here is somewhat behind the times. Erma Morton was a college girl. Perhaps there were hard feelings toward her because of that.”
Frank Schutz shook his head. “I hardly think so, madam. Wise County has more than a hundred young ladies currently attending one college or another, so Erma Morton wouldn’t exactly be considered a rarity, now would she? Or perhaps you assume we’re persecuting all of them?”
Still leaning against the wall, Carl willed himself not to smile. Score one for the commonwealth’s attorney. He ought to be a treat to watch in the court room.
“Well, we are at a loss to understand, then, Mr. Schutz,” said Mrs. Manning. “Here is a college-educated young woman, who has led an apparently blameless life, and yet you accuse her of murdering her own father. Surely, it is more likely that the unfortunate man simply fell and injured himself? Why did you not come to that conclusion instead of charging her with murder?”
Frank Schutz leaned forward, his face alight with the earnestness of his argument. “Because they lied. Both the girl and her mother. In the end, we didn’t charge the mother, but we thought long and hard about it. They lied.” He slapped his hand on the top of a thick manila folder in the middle of his desk—Erma Mo
rton’s case file.
“When Pollock Morton lay dying, they went next door to consult a neighbor. But only a few doors away in the other direction was the town doctor—and they did not go after him. Not until the neighbor insisted. They did not summon the police. Some time around daybreak, Pollock Morton died of his injuries, and still these women did not notify the law. And when—perhaps twelve hours later—an officer finally did arrive to question the family, Miss Erma Morton changed her story several times. First she denied a fight with her father, and then she said they fought. First she said he fell and hit his head on the butcher block on the porch. Then she said she struck him in the head with her shoe in self-defense.”
“I might have done that!” said little Mrs. Manning, with more temerity than usual.
The attorney’s lips twitched. “Are you confessing to the crime, ma’am?”
She blushed. “No, indeed, sir. I know you are teasing me, but I do have an idea about why she said what she did. I’m sure it’s very wrong to lie to the police, but I think I might have done it.”
Her companion’s face registered sudden comprehension. “The burglary!”
Blushing, Mrs. Manning nodded. “Yes. The burglary.”
Mrs. Coeburn nodded. “Tell him, dear.”
Mrs. Manning began to toy with the gloves in her lap, staring out the window as she spoke. “You see, Mr. Schutz, a few years ago, when my husband and I were away from home for a few days, our new next-door neighbors noticed that a side window to our house had been broken, and naturally they called the police. We were summoned home at once, and we discovered that a few of our things—some of the good silver and bits of my jewelry—had indeed gone missing. But, you see, we were certain that we knew who had done it.
“My husband’s nephew is—well, he’s not right in the head, I am sorry to say. He has been in and out of institutions, but he cannot be helped. And he cannot hold a job.” Her voice dropped to a scandalized whisper. “He drinks.”
Frank Schutz made a sympathetic noise, and nodded for her to continue.
“The poor fellow’s parents are dead, and he is accustomed to coming to my husband for help when he runs out of cash. We knew that he must have come, and finding us gone, he simply took what he needed.”
“And you didn’t share this information with the investigating officers?”
Mrs. Manning gasped. “I couldn’t! I would have been mortified. It might have been printed in the newspaper—” Here she stopped and looked up doubtfully at Carl Jennings, who smiled reassuringly.
Mr. Schutz spoke gently. “And you lied, ma’am?”
“We did. We said that nothing was missing, and that we had forgotten to leave a key for the maid who was to come over and feed our cat, and that, rather than let poor pussy starve, the woman had quite rightly broken the window in order to get in and tend to him.” Her voice trembled at the unpleasant memory, and she took several deep breaths before continuing. “So, you see, I understand the strong temptation to lie to outsiders in order to protect unpleasant family secrets. And when I heard that Mr. Morton was a drinker, and that there was arguing in the house—well, I thought I wouldn’t tell any of that to the police, either. If the poor man was dead, and if it was an accident, I would try to preserve the family’s reputation. Because I wouldn’t think that the sordid details mattered, really.” She looked pleadingly at the attorney. “Am I making sense?”
Frank Schutz sighed. “It depends on what you mean by making sense, ma’am. As a model of proper behavior in dealing with the law, then, no, I cannot say that it is. But as an example of perfectly normal human behavior, I have to admit that I understand the impulse. In these hills we like to mind our own business, maybe even more than most people, and it would be only natural to want to keep one’s private affairs out of the public record. I do see that.”
“Well, then!” said Mrs. Coeburn, with the air of one who has saved the defense attorney several days’ hard work.
“There’s more to it, though, isn’t there, sir?” said Carl, before he could stop himself.
Frank Schutz looked up at him as if he had forgotten that the young man was there. Then he smiled. “Oh, yes. There’s more. It will all come out in the trial, folks. And if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work on it.”
“Could you just give me a statement for my paper, sir? It’s my first big story, you see.”
The attorney sighed and looked as if he wanted to refuse, but at last he said, “Write this down, then. In Wise County, Virginia, the juries decide the cases, not the national newspapers.”
He ushered them out of his office with firm but courteous pleasantries, and although the Knoxville ladies were far from pleased at this sudden dismissal, they knew that arguing would get them nowhere.
Mrs. Coeburn did manage to say, “But can’t you confide in us? We cannot stay for the trial, Mr. Schutz!”
As he closed his office door, the lawyer smiled again and said, “I’m sure this young man’s newspaper will cover it for you, ma’am. Good day.”
Carl walked them downstairs and across the street, where the taxi driver awaited them in the café. The ladies were heading back to Norton to catch the evening train for Knoxville, and he had promised Cousin Araby he’d arrive in time for supper.
“Don’t you think you got what you came for?” he asked Mrs. Coeburn. “You said you wanted to find out if Miss Morton was being well-treated, and if she was likely to receive a fair trial. I think you have enough to satisfy your club members on those points.”
Mrs. Coeburn scowled. “I suppose we do,” she conceded. “And we really cannot stay for the trial.” She opened her purse and took out her card. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to let us know what happens.”
Carl hesitated. “The commonwealth’s attorney was right, you know, ma’am. This trial will be in all the newspapers. That deal the Mortons made with the New York syndicate will see to that.”
“I am aware of that. But you seem to be an honest young man, and it occurs to me that your view of the case may differ from the one we are given by the general press. And if that is the case, perhaps you would be kind enough to let me know.”
He pocketed the card. “Thank you, ma’am. I’ll be in touch if I come up with anything, but I don’t think that’s very likely.”
Mrs. Coeburn glared at him. “And why shouldn’t you?”
“Well, ma’am, the big city papers have paid for access to the defendant, and their people have the time and resources to conduct an investigation of their own, if they feel like it.”
“Well, they’re not investigating, are they?”
Carl sighed. “No, ma’am, I reckon they’re not. But it’s not their job to do that, or mine, either. All we’re supposed to do is report what we can get people to tell us, and what they say and do in court. I’m not the judge. Just the reporter. And a newly minted one at that.”
Mrs. Coeburn looked thoughtful for a moment. “I suppose you’re right. We can’t have newspaper people pretending to be detectives. Or taking sides in someone’s trial. So what are you going to do, young man?”
“If you have any advice, ma’am, I’ll take it.”
Mrs. Manning spoke up. “I think you should just listen to people. That’s what women mostly do about important matters. They listen to everybody they can, and then they try to sort out what’s true and what isn’t, and pass it on. That’s what newspapering is, really, isn’t it? Just gossip on a civic level?”
“Indeed, Dolly.” Her companion smiled. “You keep that card, Mr. Jennings. And if you should ever want to work in Knoxville, send us word.”
“We know everybody, don’t we, dear?”
Mrs. Coeburn nodded. “Everybody who matters.”
NOW, THOUGH, as he huddled under the velvet crazy quilt and a wool blanket in the cold darkness of Cousin Araby’s stillroom, it occurred to him that he might have an advantage, after all. There was no guarantee that Nora’s parents would let her come all the way alone to
Virginia, or that she would know anything if she did come. The Sight was not something you could count on to tell you anything you really wanted to know. But he thought it might be worth a try. If little Nora could come up with the truth about what had happened to Pollock Morton, so that he could get the jump on those national hounds, his future in journalism was assured.
IN A SHABBIER BOARDINGHOUSE a few blocks south of the courthouse in Wise, Luster Swann had wedged a chair under the doorknob. Who were these people? He had checked into the boardinghouse, saying as little as possible, and paying in advance for his room in order to keep conversation to a minimum, but the apple-shaped landlady had interrogated him anyway. She had not done so in any suspicious manner, which would not have annoyed him so much, but in a garrulous nothing-better-to-do tone that suggested she was casting about for an unmarried niece to introduce him to. Swann muttered a few one-syllable answers and fled.
He had to reappear at dinner, though, served boardinghouse-style, which required him to sit at a long table amidst strangers and subject himself to further probing, this time with an audience. Every answer he gave prompted one of his fellow diners to chime in. Mr. Swann was from New York? Why, isn’t that where Adele’s oldest boy had gone? He was a newspaperman? Well, Mr. Gaskins here had a collection of arrowheads that were the wonder of the county. Would he like to see them, and perhaps write a newspaper article about Mr. Gaskins and his finds? No?
Swann worried down a few bites of dry chicken while he attempted to steer the cross-examination around to the business at hand: Erma Morton’s trial. It did not go well.
The landlady, Mrs. Cathcart, gave a little shriek and said that she didn’t like to think about such dreadful things as murder.
Swann’s natural inclination would have been to give up and finish the meal in silence, but he needed copy, and he knew how to make people talk about the subject you needed them to discuss. You let them instruct you.
The Devil Amongst the Lawyers Page 17
