Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  (Yet again, it might be peripherally observed that Valentine’s female devotees took a dim view of the exotic “Veiled Lady” so abruptly ensconced in their midst: and that Mary-Louise Von Goeler in particular, long praised for her “loyalty” and “courage” regarding Valentine, was especially piqued. For it must have wounded the proud young woman’s feelings greatly to see how, in the courtroom, Valentine discreetly, and, as it were, accidentally, allowed his unperturbed gaze to drift about the rows of spectators, until he saw the lady’s comely form: and paused for a beat of one or two intense seconds, before turning away. Most vexing were the rumors, making their way through town,—from the Rose Tree Hunt Club, to the Racquet Club, to the Yacht Club, to the Corinthian Club, to the Cricket Club, to the ladies’ dining room of the Winterthurn League, to the Von Goelers’ own drawing room—that the “Veiled Lady” was the heiress daughter of a Greek shipping millionaire and his Philadelphia-born wife, well above thirty years of age, and, if not pointedly infamous in her pursuit of men, at least unshackled by certain of the hesitations and scruples Miss Von Goeler’s innocence required. The rumor may well have been groundless; as Angus Peregrine assured Mary-Louise’s father, he knew naught of it: but many an idle tongue had it that billets-doux were being exchanged between the female interloper and Valentine; that the lady declared herself passionately in love with Valentine, and was “thoroughly convinced of his blamelessness”; and that Valentine, for his part, had penned a sequence of sonnets in the lady’s honor—! Cruelest of all was the observation, made by more than one of Mary-Louise’s close friends, that, even while she gave testimony, as a character witness, in Valentine’s behalf, the fickle young man was essaying to catch sight of his mysterious admirer, who sat, as always, in the gallery of the courtroom, clad in a sumptuous lynx fur coat, with matching hat, and a dark dotted Swiss veil discreetly hiding her face.)

  Once the ebullient Angus Peregrine launched his attack, however, the atmosphere of the courtroom began to alter most tangibly,—nay, miraculously: all those tiresome and grim things Hollingshead had “proved” being, of a sudden, open to doubt, if not to contempt,—or even scornful mirth. Most ingeniously, Mr. Peregrine had hired his “man of science,” hailing from the Albany Medical Facility: a physician of advanced years, but undimmed opinions: who, though unfamiliar with the actual anatomical remains of the unfortunate Miss Teal, nonetheless took his colleague Dunn soundly to task for making certain “undemonstrable” and, indeed, “farfetched” statements, under oath, with the meretricious intention of swaying a jury. So scornfully did this bald, rotund, bespectacled medical man attack the very notion of the pathologist as a person to be taken seriously (“Why, Your Honor, and gentlemen of the jury, ‘pathology’ is a close neighbor of ‘palmistry,’ in my humble opinion”),—so bitterly did he attack Dr. Dunn in particular (this gentleman, fortunately for his pride, having returned to Boston some days previous)—and so glibly did he answer Hollingshead’s stumbling questions, during the cross-examination, that he provoked waves of outright laughter and muffled applause from the spectators: and old Judge Armbruster was sorely tried, whether to succumb to mirth himself, or rap his gavel and scold the assemblage as if they were misbehaving schoolchildren.

  Alas, how torturous a session, lasting well into three hours!—during which Xavier Kilgarvan, seated unobtrusively by himself in a rear row, suffered such pangs of consternation, and fury, and sickened revulsion, he had all he could do to remain where he was, and not flee from the scene of devastation. For it was as certain premonitory terrors had suggested, during many a sleepless night: the merrily cynical Angus Peregrine (whom he had not been able, in truth, to dislike) would now systematically destroy all that he and the police had built up, over a period of numberless weeks: and James William Hollingshead was not the man,—indeed, who in Winterthurn City was?—to thwart him.

  Thus, at the conclusion of the Albany physician’s testimony, naught seemed to be granted as hard science, save the mere fact that a female body identified by divers witnesses as “Eva Teal” had been found, in thus-and-such a place, and at thus-and-such a time: whether the deceased had indeed died “of suspicious causes,” or by her own hand (“for, indeed, Your Honor, and gentlemen of the jury, I have seen more remarkable things,—nay, more cunning, and more artful—in my time”), being, it seemed, but a matter for conjecture and debate.

  In the days that followed, while Valentine Westergaard’s wardrobe reflected, oft with daring prescience, the happy turn of events, one after another of the State’s “proofs” was challenged, and as frequently dissolved in derisory titters, as in sober logic. It would, I think, prove an exercise in needless cruelty to note, with any degree of minuteness, how the testimony of the divers defense witnesses (numbering, most remarkably, above one hundred—!) came to take its toll upon the hapless Hollingshead and his assistants; and, not least, upon Xavier Kilgarvan himself, forced to sit for hours on end while Peregrine led friendly witnesses through blatantly perjured accounts,—indeed, through wondrously articulate narratives that betrayed, from time to time, the vocabulary and rhetoric of the wily attorney; and forced to sit, to his despair, through his own mother’s testimony!—for Mrs. Anne Kilgarvan, soft-spoken, hesitant, and, withal, embarrassed at finding herself, for a half-hour’s time, the cynosure of attention, had voluntarily stepped forward to speak as a character witness for Valentine: having known him, as she gently yet adamantly explained, since boyhood, and having formed an attachment to him that approached that of a mother for her son.

  “How is it possible!—how can such a horror be happening!” Xavier bethought himself, squirming with the sudden throbbing pain of a headache; and wondering that those seated close about him did not shrink from him, in surprise at the waves of heat, and mortification, and savage fury, that doubtless radiated from his being. “And I know not which horror it truly is,—that my belovèd mother is perjuring herself, for a madman; or that she is not perjuring herself in the slightest!” Quite apart from swearing to Valentine Westergaard’s “unstained moral nature, and high nobility of spirit,” Mrs. Kilgarvan stimulated some intrigue amongst the assemblage by recounting that, if she remembered correctly,—she had once glimpsed, on Charity Street, a young lady closely resembling Miss Eva Teal, with her arm all brazenly passed through that of a dark-clad gentleman with pronounced Semitic features: which is to say, the very Isaac Rosenwald, who, she had been given to think, had confessed long ago to the selfsame murder for which Valentine was being tried—!

  “Dear God,” Xavier inwardly cried, while pressing both hands hard against his burning cheeks. “It is not possible that this horror is occurring, but that I am but locked in nightmare,—or in a loathsome pit of muck.”

  YET, IT WAS OCCURRING in precisely this wise; and though, from time to time, Hollingshead, or, more likely, one of his younger and more astute assistants, scored some definitive points in questioning one of Peregrine’s witnesses, it was unmistakable that a total shift in sentiment had transpired; and that even the cantankerous Armbruster, who reveled in quibbling with the defense over wee points of legal procedure, could not but admire the brilliance of the campaign. And, ah!—was it not a wondrous thing, to see the roses gradually returning to Valentine’s pale cheek, and the old glistening exuberance, to his eye—?

  Thus it unfolded, by malevolent prestidigitation, that, according to the sworn testimony of scores of character witnesses (including the greatly revered Archbishop Ellery Cruller, who had confirmed little Valentine in the Episcopal faith), the defendent was a Christian gentleman of the highest moral integrity; albeit his charitable gestures, and his uncalculated generosity toward those of a lower social station than his own, had plainly led him into awkward waters. (And it was doubtless true too, as several of the gentlemen smilingly averred, that Valentine, like any red-blooded member of the masculine sex, had “sown his share of wild oats in his time.”)

  As to the moral integrity of Miss Eva Teal,—some fifteen witnesses, of both sexes, swo
re to it, with many a grim shaking of the head, that very few of the mill-girls at the Shaw works had had a worse reputation: whether for laziness and outright mischief in the mill, or for a slovenliness of her person, or laxity in religious matters, or,—most damning of all—promiscuous commingling with the opposite sex. Though it could probably not be denied that Valentine Westergaard was one of Eva’s “suitors” (for want of an apter word), this gentleman was but one of a veritable contingent, of divers ages, social rank, and intentions, not excluding the Shaws’ office manager, Rosenwald; and could scarcely be faulted for pressing gifts upon her, when it was commonly known, the wanton Eva openly solicited them. Albeit her mother wept copious tears in court, and swore upon the Holy Book that Eva had been cruelly used by Mr. Westergaard, it had long been whispered up and down Cadwaller Street, how the mother urged the daughter to “make herself ever more attractive to him,” in the hope that more gifts, and outright cash, might come tumbling into her lap. Indeed, as Lyle Beck sorrowfully testified, he had heard by way of his wife (from whom he was at the present time separated), that Mrs. Teal and Eva conspired to blackmail Mr. Westergaard sometime in the future,—if all went according to their plans.

  “‘If all went according to their plans’?” Angus Peregrine quizzically reiterated, with a dramatic pause, during which time he glanced significantly at the jurors. “Pray tell us, Mr. Beck, precisely what you mean by that suggestive phrase.”

  Whereupon another dramatic pause followed; and the bullnecked young man frowned, and shook his head, and essayed to look pained, saying, he wished not to sully the ears of the ladies in the courtroom, with such gross information; nor did he care to further compromise his late sister-in-law’s name: for had she not paid in full for her immoralism?—and, in any case, never again would unknowing persons of his sex fall captive to her wiles.

  At this, both Mrs. Teal and her daughter Iris began shouting,—nay, shrieking, very like fishwives!—and had to be forcibly escorted from the courtroom by the bailiffs: leaving in their wake a most disagreeable impression, as both uttered shocking things about Mr. Beck and his ancestry, and, moreover, accused the red-faced man of having “sold his testimony to the highest bidder.”

  “Thus blood reveals itself,” Angus Peregrine ominously intoned.

  With the passage of hours, the character of the deceased was visited with such opprobrium, it almost became a question why Valentine Westergaard (or, for that matter, any man at all) would have wished to keep company with her. At last Judge Armbruster, in whom, perhaps, a scintilla of gallantry remained, called Angus Peregrine back into the privacy of his chambers; and must have convinced him, that “Eva” had been adequately disposed of; and it might be wise for him to move on, to the next phase of his campaign.

  While poor Xavier fairly writhed in his seat, and thought that, at last, he would have to flee to the biting salubriousness of the winter air, Mr. Peregrine took up the ticklish issue of the evidence confiscated by police, from out of Valentine’s townhouse: and, lo!—it was not ticklish in the slightest, but most easily explained.

  For, it seemed,—according to the testimony of Mr. Westergaard’s housekeeper, his valet, his butler, and two maids—the telltale bloodstains discovered in the downstairs rooms were “without a doubt” the result of a nosebleed suffered by a female domestic, some months previous: the which slatternly creature, since discharged from her post, had neglected to clean up after herself. As for the unspeakable female undergarments, and the despoiled dagger, found in the chest of drawers upstairs,—these were also “without a doubt” items deliberately secreted there by that selfsame domestic, to revenge herself upon her master when she learned of her dismissal. How spiteful she had been!—and how determined to cause trouble for Mr. Westergaard!—albeit he had been inordinately generous with her, and had discharged her with two weeks’ full wages.

  Upon cross-examination, the servants held fast to their fantastical stories: refusing to allow that the quantity of blood discovered in the house might not be excessive, for a nosebleed. (Albeit, as the housekeeper belatedly acknowledged, there may have been two nosebleeds, and not one.) Nor did any of them allow that it was a peculiar thing, their having been so abruptly rehired by their master, at generous salaries, after they had been unceremoniously sacked but a few months previous: for it was known, after all, that Mr. Westergaard possessed a rare, bountiful, childlike manner, and was as unpredictable in his charity as most masters are predictable. So far as the identity of the female domestic went, Mr. Hollingshead was gravely informed that the slattern had departed Winterthurn of a sudden, leaving behind no forwarding address; and, it was later revealed, to no one’s surprise, she had given one and all an entirely fictitious name—!

  So it was, to the despair of the prosecution and its supporters, the open-and-shut nature of the case was totally destroyed: and the invaluable evidence assembled by Xavier Kilgarvan, and seized by the police, was in the process of being,—ah, how blithely!—explained away. Such evidence as did exist, and could not be exactly refuted, yet could not be held to necessarily prove anything against Valentine Westergaard, no more, say, than it might be held to necessarily prove anything against any one of the servants, or any visitor of Valentine’s. All the servants swore that the master of the house had been totally in ignorance of the contents of his chest of drawers, as he never had occasion to use it; nor could he have hidden the antique dagger there,—for, as all recalled, he had complained of its being stolen from his drawing room some months previous.

  And who had stolen it from him? Why, the dishonest and conniving servant-girl, whose name no one knew and who had vanished utterly from Winterthurn, leaving not a trace of herself behind.

  Being told such things by one after another of the servants in Valentine Westergaard’s employ, Mr. Hollingshead lost his temper, and earned a reproof from Judge Armbruster when, flush-faced, he turned with a clumsy ironical flourish to the jurors, and challenged them thusly: “Gentlemen, if you believe the defense, why, then, you are capable of believing anything,—that black is white, that up is down, that God and Satan are one!”

  Following this sequence, Mr. Peregrine called to the witness stand Hiram Munck and several of his senior officers; and sternly commanded them to explain to the court, with no subterfuge, how it was they had extracted an “airtight confession” from the late Isaac Rosenwald, some months ago; yet had the temerity to arrest Valentine Westergaard for the crimes to which Rosenwald had confessed. In turn, each of the police officers was subjected to so methodical, and merciless, and skilled, an examination, it was wondered how the men could ever show their faces in Winterthurn City again—! (Mr. Munck, as it developed, was to retire from public life within a few months, pleading exigencies of age and broken health.) Either the much-touted confession of poor Rosenwald was false, and very likely coerced from him; or it was valid,—in which case no grounds could possibly exist for bringing identical charges against Valentine Westergaard.

  “Here we have a most baroque species of police work, indeed,” Angus Peregrine all drily observed, with a wink at the smiling jurors. “Why, I should not be surprised to open the Gazette tomorrow evening, and learn that these indefatigable gentlemen have reversed themselves yet again, and arrested a third ‘suspect’!”

  Forced to endure hours of this examination,—which might more properly have been called a dissection—Xavier was consumed with a desire to rise from his cramped seat, and wave his fists, and begin shouting: for what might be more hopeless than the impasse to which police bungling, and Hollingshead’s ineptitude, had brought them? He clenched his fists, but remained rooted in his place; blinked tears of fury from his eyes; and stoically held his tongue.

  Yet there remained the hope that a single astute member of the jury would be unswayed by the defense’s trickery; and that, by way of his persuasion, the other jurors would gradually see the truth; or, at the very least, the jury would be hung and a new trial called. But when Xavier covertly studied the jurors’
faces,—when, in fatigue and mounting despair, he essayed to divert himself from courtroom testimony, by “reading” their thoughts—he could not be deceived that one of them was untouched by Angus Peregrine’s assault; or, indeed, that a single one of them gave sign of possessing especial intelligence and sensibility.

  Nay, how very commonplace, and ordinary, and shallow, these twelve gentlemen appeared; and how dishearteningly gullible!—having been moved to visible outrage by Mr. Hollingshead’s presentation, some days before; but now, moved yet more visibly to the obverse position,—and so out of sympathy with the prosecution, they shrugged and whispered amongst themselves when Hollingshead spoke, or dared even to close their eyes, in full view of the court. For even with the damning evidence of the murder weapon in hand,—the stained petticoat, the female apparel, etc.—the State seemed now powerless to stay the tide of Angus Peregrine’s mesmerizing narrative: and his voice reigned supreme.

  Doubtless his tale had its attractions, and might be adjudged as convincing, if the actual truth were not known: for it possessed legendary qualities, and had about it an air of the comfortingly familiar. An open-hearted, guileless, perhaps too-charitable young Christian gentleman, of noble blood, as it were, was lured into a lowlife sector of the city, there to be exploited, with chill premeditation, by an amoral girl, and her mercenary mother; this same guileless gentleman, in speaking too openly of his involvement, being, some months later, as cruelly exploited by the law enforcement authorities,—and by “certain local personalities” who wished him harm, for private reasons. (At this pronouncement, Mr. Peregrine turned his stern, grave, “piercing” stare in Xavier Kilgarvan’s direction, whereby the entire courtroom, not excepting Valentine Westergaard himself, followed his lead!—the which frontal assault left the young detective as miserable in his seat, and as flushed with surprise and embarrassment, as any schoolboy chastised in full view of his fellows.)