After I had finished eating and washing my cup and saucer, I went outside. The sun was blazing down with a thin, sharp sort of autumn heat which felt good on my neck and shoulders. There was a chill in that house behind me that never wholly left it. Apparently the storm had blown itself out—there were a few clouds far to the east, but elsewhere the blue was unbroken. I let my eye range north to where the Marcy house stood, but there was no apparent movement around it. After a while a car came crawling down the road and turned into the drive, but that was all. That, and the fact that there was no one in the fields around the place, and no sound of any sort. It was a Sunday silence, but it wasn’t Sunday.
I strolled aimlessly across the grass and down toward the bay. Looking at water is one of my favorite ways of doing nothing. Even if the thought of swimming was ridiculously inappropriate, and in spite of the fact that I should have loathed the sight of the river because it had just killed a woman the night before, it seemed better to stroll toward the bay than up the road past the ominous silence of the Marcy house. So I went toward the bay. The grass was quite dry again and the ground no longer muddy. Everything was so precisely the way it had been yesterday I could hardly believe that the things my memory told me had occurred were possible. Even when I remembered them most actively, they were not altogether real, as the sun, the grass, the blue sparkle of the water was real.
Anne was sitting on the bank over the swimming beach. She was wearing a tweed coat with a pattern that looked loud to my conservative masculine eyes and a plain dark-brown skirt. The sun was in her hair and lying gold on the skin of her neck and hands and bare legs. She was kicking against the cut bank with the heels of her sport shoes and staring out over the water. I dropped down beside her.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
The ensuing silence lasted a long time. Finally she sighed and said, “It’s hard to believe it all, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Who’d you see this morning,” she went on after a while. “Walters?”
“No. I had breakfast with Julian. Then I came on out here. I didn’t want to hang round the house. I didn’t see her at all.”
“I did,” said Anne. “Something’s wrong there. She’s desperately unhappy about . . . yesterday, I suppose. Or else something that happened this morning.”
“What?” I couldn’t feel much interested.
Anne shook her head. “I don’t know. I just wondered if you’d noticed it . . . Did Uncle Julian tell you the inquest is this afternoon?
“No. Is it?”
She nodded. “We’re all to go. At least, so Mrs. Walters says. I had breakfast with her. It wasn’t cosy. She only spoke to me once and then it was to tell me that.” She pulled a stem of grass and put it between her teeth. It was so much like yesterday that I felt confused for a moment, as though time had slipped, or I had become misplaced in it. Anne went on after a time. “She looked as if she had been crying. I think perhaps she and Uncle Julian had words this morning. Anyhow, she went into his room earlier to see if he was awake and she was gone quite a while. I could hear their voices through the door, but not what they were saying.” She nipped the grass stem again. “It would be fine if they really quarreled and Uncle Julian sent her away.”
Her mood struck me as odd, but my own was no more explicable. We both felt detached, passive, wholly centered in the moment. The past and the future were equally uncomfortable, and so we were just existing as nearly as possible in a pure present. There was nothing in our words or actions that morning to suggest that we were more than the most casual acquaintances and most of the time, I think, we were hardly aware of each other. Most of the time. But there were the moments when I would notice the light in her hair, or the faint fragrance of the perfume she was wearing, and I would be aware of her, all right. She hardly looked at me.
We stayed there by the water till one o’clock and by the time we returned to the house, lunch was on the table. A vile meal it was, too—canned peas, some warmed-over stew, and pale yellow, slippery canned peaches that reminded me of college commons. I looked curiously at Mrs. Walters while I was putting down as much of the food as I could manage. She was obviously outfitted for town, in a stiff blue dress. Her hair was more carefully arranged than I had yet seen it, and her make-up was straight again. But there was a sullenness in her manner, even toward Julian, and she obviously resented all of us. “You might have come in sooner,” she said to Anne, “I had to get the lunch singlehanded.” And to me, “I made your bed, Professor Sayles. But if you want any more tidying up than that, you’ll have to do it yourself.” As I recall, she did not address a single word to Julian.
There was something defiant about him. He ate more than he had at breakfast, rather as if to avoid the necessity for speaking than as if he were hungry. He must have been working hard. There was a black smudge on one cheek—the one he always rubbed when he was concentrating, I remembered—and his hands were grimy.
After the meal, Anne went over to him and gave him a kiss on the top of his head. “Now Uncle Julian,” she said, “you go up and wash your hands, fix your hair, and put on a tie. Dick and I aren’t going to take you to town looking like a mechanic.”
“But that’s what I am, my dear,” he said absently. All the same he got up and went obediently out. Mrs. Walters followed him without a word to either of us, but the look she gave Anne was eloquent. Anne grinned sweetly back at her and went on collecting the plates. I felt the usual helpless embarrassment of the male caught in the cross fire of a woman’s skirmish. When the door closed behind Mrs. Walters, Anne gave me a grimace that was funny enough to make me laugh. I hoped that Mrs. Walters didn’t hear it, but I suspect she did.
The kitchen, though, was a cheerful place after Julian and Mrs. Walters had left. Anne and I washed the dishes slowly because it was something to do, and had a good time till the last one was racked away. Then there was nothing to think of but the trip into town.
We left the house about half past two and the ride was a stiffly silent one. Julian sat with Anne in front, and Mrs. Walters and I occupied opposite corners of the back seat. We neither looked nor spoke at each other in the course of the drive. All four of us were preoccupied with what was to come and yet, though we knew that we were going to face the hostility of all Barsham Harbor, we were not united by the opposition we were to confront. “This,” I thought, “is no way to go into a thing of this sort,” but I could not see what to do about it, so I kept silent.
As we passed the road into Seth Marcy’s farm, a car swung out of it and followed after us. It came in so patly that I felt the driver had been waiting for our car to appear. Once Anne slowed down and pulled over to let it get ahead, but whoever was driving refused to go past. He kept his car an even distance behind us all the way into town.
20.
THE INQUEST was to be held in a courtroom on the second floor of the County Building. We had no trouble in finding a parking place and as we stepped out of our Ford the following car drove up behind us. It was the taxi in which I had ridden from the station the morning before. Seth Marcy got out of it and so did the driver, whom I recognized at once. They stared at us without any expression and waited till we entered the building and started up the stairs. Then they came after us, walking with the slow, loose-jointed stride of countrymen. I could feel their eyes on the back of my neck.
We found seats toward the front of the room and sat down. It was rather a dingy, large courtroom and there must have been well over a hundred people in it even before the presiding magistrate, whoever he was, arrived. I presume he was the coroner, but I don’t know his name and never did. The irrelevant details of a situation like ours don’t impinge much on your mind. Dan Hoskins was there, of course, and I saw Dr. Rambouillet sitting across the aisle from us. It was some time before I noticed Ellen Hoskins. She was sitting at a table with a man who looked like the court clerk, methodically sharpening a pencil with a pocket sharpener.
Most of the t
ime before the hearing opened I spent looking at the people in the courtroom. They were a grim lot, on the whole. We New Yorkers become used to audiences which have a good deal of more or less ebullient blood in them—Italians, Spanish, all sorts of foreigners-that-were who have still not become “typical” Americans. Here it was different. These people were all of the same stock and startlingly alike underneath their superficial differences. They were, on the average, tall and inclined to thinness. Their faces were sharp and gray or weathered. Men and women, they had a look of being on the defensive toward life in some way that I could not define. They were inclined to shabbiness—again by New York standards—and there was a faint truculence about the way they sat and the looks they cast in our direction.
Good people they might be, but narrow and cold was the way they looked. I thought as I surveyed them that it was lucky we were innocent of any sort of wrongdoing. It would be hard to find an impartial jury among a people like this.
The jury was, actually, a cross section of the spectators. It was wholly composed of men, most of them apparently farmers, and all middle-aged or older. They were not in the least ill at ease in the jury box. Now and then a dry smile would cross the face of one of them, a long-boned fellow with a mackinaw jacket who sat on the end of the second row, when he caught sight of someone he knew in the audience. But it seemed to me, looking at them, that they were serious and dignified about what they had been called upon to do.
The formal proceedings began almost on time. The magistrate seemed to have no particular plan of inquiry. He took evidence first of all from the man who had found the body—Harry Miller. His testimony was nothing more than what Ellen Hoskins had told us the night before. Then Dr. Peters was called to testify, and here the examining officer showed a nice sense of economy by using the doctor first to identify the body, and then to describe the medical aspects of its condition.
Some of what he had to say belongs in this record, though it has already been suggested. Dr. Peters was a large, dignified medico with white hair and a weighty gold watch-chain. As the dean of the Barsham Harbor doctors and coroner’s physician as well, he spoke with a good deal of dignity, and weighted his sentences with technical words and terms even when they were not necessary. He reported that when he first examined the body of Mrs. Marcy she was already dead. I felt an insane desire to smile at that.
“Can you give us the precise cause of death, Dr. Peters?” The coroner’s tone was deferential.
Dr. Peters looked grave. “The cause of death might briefly be described as internal injuries,” he declared, “that is, hemorrhage resulting from such injuries.” He proceeded to launch into a Virgilian cascade of Latin terms, of which I recognized only a few, including the astounding fact that Mrs. Marcy had received an apparently terrible blow across the chest which had resulted in a fractured sternum, or breastbone, and a ruptured spleen. Further, both her arms had been broken.
A ripple went through the courtroom at his testimony. I know that it took me wholly by surprise, and even the coroner appeared incredulous. “Then you do not believe, Dr. Peters, that the deceased met her death by drowning?”
Dr. Peters looked pained. “I have testified as to the cause—or causes—of death. None of the symptoms of drowning were present. There was no froth in the deceased’s mouth or nose, nor even in the trachea and bronchial tubes. Neither was there water in the stomach.” He paused and cleared his throat. “The definitive test for drowning is the Gettler test. It depends upon a chemical analysis of blood taken from the pulmonary vein. If pulmonary blood contains a higher percentage of salt than the normal, the diagnosis is death from drowning in salt water. If the blood contains a lower salt content than the normal, the diagnosis is, of course drowning—more technically, asphyxiation—from submersion in fresh water. In the case of the deceased I did not apply the Gettler test.”
He paused and the coroner supplied the cue for which he was palpably waiting. “Can you tell the court why you did not apply the Gettler test, Dr. Peters?”
“I can. There were two reasons. One, that the pulmonary vein had been ruptured as a result of the injuries which I have already described. The other, that the deceased—ah—entered the river at a time and point when the water was, in view of the condition of the tide, brackish.” He brought the word out with a fine flourish of the tongue. “In my opinion the test would have been of no practical value.”
That was Dr. Peters’ testimony, though it took much longer to deliver than to summarize. I listened to it with amazement. It seemed to me entirely incredible that Mrs. Marcy should not have died as all of us had assumed she did. And yet, in spite of his bombast, Dr. Peters was clearly testifying with knowledge and authority. Pompous he might be, but I could not believe that he was ignorant of his facts. I stole a look at Dr. Rambouillet, but that young man’s dark, handsome face was composed. Apparently he saw nothing in what his colleague was saying at which to cavil.
The coroner was as puzzled as the rest of us. He asked Dr. Peters if he had any idea what could have occasioned the numerous injuries he had described? Dr. Peters pointed out that his province was not speculation, but that the injuries were consonant with the deceased’s having been struck violently across the thoracic—“or chest”—region by a bar or the edge of a plank. “Although,” he concluded, “a fall against such an edge as I have mentioned might have produced the same result, provided the deceased had fallen from a sufficient height.” He added that he had no reason to assume such a fall. In reply to a question from the coroner he admitted that he had been the deceased’s personal physician “since the day she was born” and that he knew of no complaint which would have rendered her liable to sudden dizziness, or to fainting.
When he finally stepped down from the stand, my mind was in turmoil. If Mrs. Marcy was not alive when she went into the river, then how explain a thousand things? Her regaining consciousness, for instance? Her walk toward her home? When, and under what circumstances had she died? Obviously not in our house nor as a result of her fall on the stairs. Though I wondered numbly whether the edge of a stair tread could have inflicted the injuries which Dr. Peters had described. It seemed impossible and yet . . .
Seth Marcy was the next witness and he made a bitter one. He described his long wait for his wife’s return, his eventual decision to come after her, and his summoning Anne and myself to the back door. “Her lamp was still burnin’ in their kitchen,” he said. “Tell me why that was. It was the only time she left it on. You can’t get around that. They’re hidin’ somethin’, and I look to this trial to git it outa them.”
The coroner rapped with his gavel. “Now, Seth. This ain’t a trial, and you’ve got to be careful about accusing people.”
Seth’s face flushed dark, but he said nothing more, returned a few sullen answers to minor questions and stepped down from the witness chair. As he strode along the aisle to his seat he almost brushed against Mrs. Walters and his thin, hooked mouth went down at one corner. “You dirty whore,” he said out of the corner of it in a low voice, “you’ll pay for this.” Then he was past her and into his seat behind us.
Mrs. Walters said nothing, but her face went white and I saw that she was trembling. There was an anger in her eyes that was terrible. I would not have chosen to incur Seth Marcy’s hatred, but I’d have taken it any day in preference to the ice-cold wrath that looked out of Mrs. Walters’ eyes.
Our turns came next. Mine was first; I told the same story I had given Dan Hoskins, but I put as much emphasis as I could upon the thunderclap. The fact that I was a college professor and one from a New York university did not seem to please most of the courtroom; there were sneers on several faces confronting me. When I admitted that I had no idea how Mrs. Marcy had met so terrible and violent a death, the taxi driver laughed contemptuously and loud enough so that I heard him. It was possible, I suggested, that in falling from the bank she had struck against a ledge of rock, but I admitted I had not noticed such a rock at the place where Mrs.
Marcy had fallen. I added that the evidence of the footprints, which I described in as much detail as I could remember, was plain and emphasized that Seth Marcy had been as convinced of their authenticity as I was. I pointed out that he had followed them in advance of Miss Conner and myself.
It was surprising how much latitude the coroner permitted. He interrupted seldom and allowed me to tell our side of the story without correction. “Thank you, Professor Sayles,” he said when I had finished. “I reckon you’ve told us what we want to know.”
“Or what he wants us to know,” said a voice from one of the benches toward the rear of the room.
The coroner pounded with his gavel. “Silence. This is a court of law. If there ain’t decent order here the room’ll be cleared.”
With that, I went back to my seat and it was Anne’s turn next. She told the same story that I had and again there were no questions. I began to feel uneasy. There was a growing air of hostility in the room which was inescapable and I wondered why we were given so much latitude. It seemed to me that the coroner would naturally try to please the people to whom he owed his office, after all, by giving us an uncomfortable time of it. But on the contrary, he was quietly kind to Anne.
I looked at her on that raised chair and felt my heart contract within me. She didn’t belong there. Her clothes, bright and smart by comparison with what any other woman in the room was wearing, were too gay for Barsham Harbor. Her hair was too gold, too much like sun in a room that was not meant to be other than shadowy. She was too lovely a contrast with the people who were here to look at us and judge by their own harsh standards. Beauty is a hateful thing if it is of a kind to shame you. And Anne seemed to me to shame these people. They stared at her with a sort of impudent curiosity, or at least the men did. That made me inwardly furious. The women stared coldly at her, but there was no mercy in their eyes.
The Rim of Morning Page 41
