The Rim of Morning

by William Sloane

  Anne’s voice was low and steady. She behaved as if she were accustomed to giving evidence, and her story was clear and direct. She told it her own way, too. I think no one would have been willing to believe that we had rehearsed our evidence beforehand. When she finished she turned to the coroner. “I don’t know if what I’m going to say belongs in your records, but I do want to say that this thing that has happened is horrible and that I—that we all—feel terribly about it. Elora and I were friends, really. She was an adorable person . . . I wish it hadn’t happened. That’s all.”

  The coroner thanked her and she stepped down to a buzz of low-voiced comment in the room. I could not tell exactly what they thought of her, but I suspected it was the inevitable judgment—that is, the men were half won over by her sincerity but the women contemptuous. At least one thin, blowsy housewife a few seats away muttered something to the pallid man beside her which sounded like “baggage.”

  I find it hard to convey the inquest as it seemed to me while it was going on. My own emotions were too chaotic for exact definition— they were a blend of confusion underlaid by fear, of uncertainty, of surprise, of a gnawing anxiety as to what all this was going to mean for Anne, Julian, and myself, bitter regret that I had not secured a lawyer, and over them all a sort of numbness. The whole thing was too far outside anything that had happened to me before. I felt responsible for the group of us; it was up to me more than anyone else to see that we came out of this mess without tragedy and yet, I felt helpless to alter the course of events.

  Never, in the most unfamiliar parts of Europe, had I felt so alien as I did there in that Maine courtroom. The lot of us were simply cut off from everyone else. When the coroner had reproved Seth Marcy for calling the inquest a “trial” he was only technically correct. For we were really on trial, in the eyes of Barsham Harbor. One of their own people had died a horrible and inexplicable death and we were somehow mixed up in it. We were outlanders. They meant to be sure that we did not get away with it. I squeezed Anne’s hand when she sat down again beside me.

  “Good work.”

  She did not reply. Her lips were pressed together hard and her fingers gripped mine. I knew that she wanted to cry and wouldn’t permit herself to do so.

  Then Mrs. Walters was called to the stand. Instantly the buzz of comment took on a new note, more sibilant, deeper in tone. They had been waiting for her.

  21.

  MRS. WALTERS took her place with an unruffled composure, gave her name and address without being asked for them, and settled herself in the witness chair. The coroner looked over at her above the rim of his glasses.

  “What is your position in Mr. Blair’s household?” he began at once.

  “I am Mr. Blair’s housekeeper and assistant.”

  “How long have you occupied that position, Mrs. Walters?”

  “Over three years.”

  “I see. What do your duties as ‘assistant’ consist of?”

  “I help Mr. Blair with his experiments.”

  The same voice in the rear of the room which had heckled me suggested, “Ask her what her duties are as housekeeper then.”

  The coroner’s gavel was peremptory. “That’s enough of that, Hank Mason. If you can’t remain silent, you’ll have to leave this hearing.” But the muscles at the corners of his mouth were twitching.

  Mrs. Walters said quietly, “I will answer any question which is put to me. But so far as I know, I am not on trial here. I do not see why I should tolerate insults.”

  “Now, now,” said the coroner. “Please speak only in answer to my questions. Tell us what you personally saw of the accident to Mrs. Marcy.”

  Mrs. Walters’ response was instantaneous. “Nothing directly. Mrs. Marcy had finished cleaning the room where Mr. Blair and I work. She was on her way back—I suppose to the kitchen. There was a sudden, very loud clap of thunder and it seemed to me I heard also a faint sort of cry. I left the room where I was and went to the head of the stairs. Apparently Mr. Blair heard the cry, too, because we met at the head of the stairs. When we looked down, there was Mrs. Marcy lying at the bottom. For a moment we were too surprised and alarmed to do anything. Then we went down the stairs. We stood there a moment, looking down at her, and Mr. Sayles and Miss Conner came in.”

  She told the rest of the story substantially as she had before, putting great emphasis upon the fact that she would not have let Mrs. Marcy leave if she had not been sure she was fully recovered and, even so, that she had gone part way with her. She admitted that she had been at fault in letting Mrs. Marcy go at all, but declared that the woman had insisted. “It’s easy enough to see now what I should have done,” she concluded. “But it wasn’t so easy then. People fall more or less all the time and usually without any serious damage. I have had some nursing experience. I was satisfied that she was all right. But if there is any blame, I am willing to take it.”

  When she said that, it seemed to me that her eyes were fastened on Julian, but he did not acknowledge her glance in any way.

  “When you carried Mrs. Marcy to the sofa,” the coroner said, “did you examine her in any detail? Can you tell us, that is, if she had any of the injuries which Dr. Peters described and which I am sure you heard?”

  Mrs. Walters shook her head contemptuously. “If she had, I would never have let her leave the house. And she could not have left it, either, because she would have been dead. Dr. Peters testified that she died of those injuries. But she did not get them from whatever accident she had in our house. She may have struck a rock in her fall into the river . . . I don’t know how she got them.”

  Seth Marcy stood up in his seat. His face was livid and the finger he shook at her trembled. “You lie and you know it. Why was her light left burnin’ in the kitchen, right where she always puts it? Answer me that if you can!” He sat down again, shaking with hate, and behind him a murmur of approval rose from the room.

  Mrs. Walters was calm, while the coroner pounded for quiet. “Let the court put the questions,” he shouted as soon as he could make himself heard. “This here’s a court of law.” He turned to Mrs. Walters. “I was comin’ to that question next. Seth Marcy testified his wife used to leave the lamp in your kitchen burnin’ in the window until she started for home. Then she would put it out, and Seth knew she’d left your place. You knew of this arrangement?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then how do you explain the fact that you arranged the lamp so as to give Mrs. Marcy’s signal to Seth?”

  The look Mrs. Walters gave the coroner and the court was full of the most contemptuous scorn I have ever seen. “Why,” she said as if speaking to a class of stupid children, “I thought of course that she was already home. I left the lamp lighted for my own convenience in case I had to get something later for Mr. Blair. Seth Marcy is making something up out of whole cloth. If he had the least intelligence he would see that there was no sense in what he’s been saying.”

  “Please stick to the questions I ask you, Mrs. Walters. This court isn’t to find out what you think of Seth Marcy—or any of the rest of us for that matter.”

  A murmur of satisfaction rose from the room and I damned Mrs. Walters under my breath. She was not doing us any good and I knew that the rest of us would be judged by her. These people would tolerate no arbitrary words from any of us, but least of all, from her. She was the focal point of their scorn and hate.

  When the room had quieted once more the coroner went on with his examination, but it was plain that he was at a loss. He no longer knew what questions to ask; the evidence was at an impasse. Mrs. Marcy had not drowned, but had been killed by a blow or a fall. She had fallen in our house, but her injuries could not have been sustained there because she had been able to walk home. Mrs. Walters was stubborn in her testimony. After a time he gave it up and dismissed her from the stand.

  The confusion in his mind was apparent in his next act, which was to call Dan Hoskins to the stand and question him about the footprints. The big
sheriff was terse and direct in his evidence. He declared that although the rain had somewhat defaced the prints, he had tested them with Mrs. Marcy’s shoes (“yes, the ones she had on when we found her”) and a pair which Mrs. Walters had given him early that morning. He was in no doubt but that the prints had been made by the two women. The trail was an easy one to follow and its meaning inescapable.

  “You believe then,” the coroner demanded, “that the previous witness’s story is correct?”

  The sheriff nodded slowly. “I ain’t got no choice but to believe it. The shoes fit the prints and you can see what was happenin’ to her practically every foot of the way. Them prints are still there. I’ve looked at ’em twice. You can’t git away from ’em.”

  The coroner went on to examine the big man about the way in which he had heard of the “accident,” his connection with the search, his inspection of the ground, and his interrogation of us. As I listened to Dan Hoskins’ replies I came to understand why Anne and I, at least, had been so gently handled in the examination. He was obviously concerned to make plain his conviction that we were not involved in anything criminal. “These folks gave me straight answers, so far as I’m a judge,” he said once. And again, “There ain’t any evidence I can see against anybody—at least so far.” I knew that he was speaking not to the court but to the courtroom and the heavy silence with which his audience listened to him indicated how little they liked what he was saying.

  “Maybe these folks were kinda careless,” the sheriff declared at the end of his testimony, “but that’s the wust I can say in the light of the evidence.”

  “Have you any theory as to how Mrs. Marcy came by the injuries Dr. Peters described?” The coroner’s voice was openly puzzled.

  Dan Hoskins shook his head. “I guess Perfessor Sayles is right. She musta hit a rock ledge. That current there could slam a body against the stone with turrible force, I calculate. If you ask me, she was unconscious but alive when she went into the water. Or maybe just conscious enough to fight a little against the water. Inside the first few seconds the river slammed her up against the rock.”

  The coroner thanked the sheriff and recalled Dr. Peters. He was questioned at some length as to whether the sheriff’s explanation were a possible one. This time the doctor was not so positive. He admitted that with a chest injury of the extent he had found, there was no likelihood that Mrs. Marcy would have drowned, in the technical sense. He said he believed the injuries had been sustained before she went into the water at all, but declared that it would be impossible to testify certainly on this point. He could, however, say “with assurance” that Mrs. Marcy must have been struck immediately after she entered the river, for there was no water in her lungs, and undoubtedly instinctive breathing would have forced her to draw breath within a minute, thereby pumping water into the lungs and stomach. He gave it as his opinion that she would not have been capable of drawing a breath after the injury.

  By this time even the slowest thinkers in the spectators had begun to see the intricacy of the problem. There were head scratchings on the part of the men and a steady hiss of whispers from the women. My own confusion had been supplanted by a deep feeling of alarm. Something had happened to Mrs. Marcy which was not yet explained. What it was I could not begin to imagine, but it must be connected either with Seth Marcy or with us. Seth was a brooding, angry man. Everything that I had seen of him made me positive that he was capable of violence, even to his wife. On the other hand, if his actions when he discovered what had happened to Elora were forced and nothing but pretense, then he was a superb actor. Beyond all that, there was the evidence of the footprints . . .

  On the other hand, both Anne and myself were clearly not connected with whatever had actually happened. I, at least, could be wholly positive about that. Which left Julian and Mrs. Walters. Julian was, I considered, out of the question . . . My thoughts had reached this point when he was called to the stand.

  Julian’s testimony was curious. He gave it in a thin, uncertain voice which must have made a bad impression on the coroner. Certainly it did on his audience. He began by declaring that he had been in his room when the burst of thunder of which we had all spoken occurred. He had come out into the hall with a sense of vague alarm and found Mrs. Walters hurrying toward the stairs. He had seen Mrs. Marcy lying at their foot. “I was, of course, horrified.” He said the words as if he did not entirely mean them. “I am afraid that I did not make any close examination of Mrs. Marcy or participate in what the others were doing to help her. It was a great shock.” His voice quavered when he said that. He meant the last few words, at least, I decided.

  “Mr. Blair,” the coroner began after a pause, “you are a scientist?”

  “I am.”

  “Would you tell us why you came to Barsham Harbor?”

  Julian looked trapped. His eyes flickered round the room and he moved his hands nervously on the arms of the witness chair. “Why . . . for no special reason. That is, I wanted a place as isolated from large cities and power lines as possible. The location of my house is ideal for my purposes.”

  “In what way?” The coroner seemed determined to pursue the subject.

  Julian drew a long breath, and said, “My work is concerned with delicate electrical impulses. If you like, they may be compared to very faint radio waves . . . I was anxious to carry on my researches as far as possible from heavy-duty electric machinery of all kinds and other disturbing influences. That is why I came to Maine. That, and its isolation from the more populous parts of the country. I am both a scientist and an inventor. Secrecy, in the early stages of a research, is important.”

  The coroner said “Thank you,” in an unsatisfied tone. He looked hard at Julian. “Would you be willing to tell us the nature of the problem you’re working on now, Mr. Blair?”

  “I would prefer not to do so except to say that it involves research into very minute electric impulses.”

  “Was Mrs. Marcy aware of the nature of your work?”

  Julian looked surprised. “It never occurred to me to wonder. I do not see how she could have been.”

  The coroner frowned. “When this work of yours is completed, Mr. Blair, will it have any commercial application?” For the first time I noticed that the coroner was reading these questions from a slip of paper on the bench before him. I looked at Dan Hoskins. He was listening to Julian with complete concentration and I saw that Ellen Hoskins’ pencil was racing across the paper in front of her. It had occurred to me for an instant that perhaps these questions had been supplied to the coroner by the sheriff. I discarded the thought. Their very phrasing was against such an assumption. But Ellen Hoskins might have written them.

  Julian looked still more surprised. “I do not see what all this has to do with Mrs. Marcy,” he declared in the firmest tones he had yet used. “But although I have not thought about the commercial applications of my research, I can say that I do not believe they will be very widespread. By that, I mean that my goal is not an ordinary commercial one. It is more . . .” he paused and groped for the next word, “humanitarian. And for me,” he added with an undertone of defiance behind his words, “the problem does not arise in any case. I intend to make the discoveries which arise out of my work public property the moment I am convinced they are sufficiently advanced to do so.”

  Then I knew. In a single flash of intuition I saw one of the strains which was operating in that household of ours on the Point. The clue was the sudden stiffening of Mrs. Walters’ back as Julian delivered his last sentence. Her eyes narrowed and she stared at him angrily. She did not want that mad invention of his made public. Furthermore, she believed it would work and she was angry at the thought of Julian’s giving it to the world. For a moment I was incredulous. She couldn’t really think that thing would do what Julian expected. She must have joined forces with him originally on a very different assumption—that he was an ideal client who would pay well and go on paying as long as she could consciously—or perhaps it
was subconsciously—delude him. But now, she believed that he would succeed and she was determined that when he did he would not turn over his discoveries to the world.

  It was a terrific commercial opportunity, of course. Julian was quite wrong on that point, at least. In one flash I saw the whole thing as it would be—the duplication in secrecy of Julian’s machine, the advertising, the publicity, the carefully publicized proofs of the invention’s actual validity. The long and pitiful queues of people who were bereaved, waiting to pay for the privilege of a few minutes’ intercourse with those they had lost . . . A blackness came in front of my eyes. I felt suddenly dizzy and, more than that, afraid.

  Odd that in all the talk with Julian, and all the high-flown things that Mrs. Walters had said to me, I had not once felt a real conviction of the possibility that Julian would succeed. But in that clash of anger and wills in the court I saw a stronger rebuttal to my skepticism than in anything which had gone before. Both Julian and Mrs. Walters were convinced, so convinced that they were already at odds over the future of the machine which Julian had fathered. He had actually done it, then . . . And even as I thought that, a revulsion occurred in my mind. “By God,” I told myself, “you’re crazy! He can’t have. It’s utterly and absolutely impossible!”

  22.

  THE CORONER was persistent. “What I am getting at, Mr. Blair, is the question of whether, if Mrs. Marcy had known of your work, she could have given away its secret or in any way affected the progress of your research?”

  Julian frowned. “My working model,” he declared, “is so complex that I doubt whether more than a few people in the entire country could grasp its nature, even after prolonged examination. I do not see how Mrs. Marcy could have understood it in the slightest.”