The interior of the courthouse was as lined and overlaid with mahogany and marble as a heavily frosted chocolate cake. Whole quarries and forests must have been gouged and toppled in the sacrifice. The tall marble corridors were large enough to play football in—including the kicking of high punts—while much of the actual business of the courthouse was transacted in cubbyholes. The place was a monument to Thorstein Veblen’s theory of “conspicuous waste.” At the dedication ceremonies (my mother Belle had told me) loggers and farmers and miners had driven in from all over the county, picnicking on the big lawn, listening to the speeches of the rural statesmen, uneasily beholding this remarkable reason for the sharp increase in the county’s bonded indebtedness.
The whole vast structure was topped by a great oval dome, like a sort of inspired Byzantine architectural afterthought, as though a Turkish mosque had flown over during the night and inadvertently dropped a pup. This rounded dome was visible for miles around Iron Bay, and mariners far out on Lake Superior were said regularly to chart their courses by it. But it was also utilitarian, serving as the skylight of the courtroom (for once a nice thrifty note), and I stood gazing up thoughtfully at its stained-glass windows—stained by the pigeons, that is—wondering what happy accident had conspired to make this courtroom not only one of great dignity, but also the one place in the entire courthouse where one did not have to shout like a stevedore to be heard.
The judge’s bench, a massive mahogany affair, stood like a lone judicial island on the end of the room nearest me, the mahogany-enclosed sheriff’s chair and desk at its right nearer me, the witness stand on the left, and the clerk’s railed cubicle running across the front, the ensemble looking faintly like a truncated battleship with suspended mahogany lifeboats. Glancing guiltily around I ascended to the judge’s bench and sat myself gingerly in the tall leather swivel chair and tilted it—“Ah”—and nearly fell backwards. “Oops!” I glared around looking for someone to commit for contempt. The glowering oil portraits of three bearded deceased judges seemed to frown down even more fiercely from the wall …
The empty jury box loomed to my left; the two wide leather-topped counsel tables stood out in front, the People’s (and plaintiff’s) table to my left, the defense table to my right, with tall old-fashioned hourglass brass cuspidors standing like tethered watchdogs at either corner. Immediately beyond the two tables stood the lawyers’ chairs, running nearly across the width of the courtroom, then the mahogany rail with the gates at either end, and beyond that the double rows of uncomfortable square mahogany benches for the extra jurors and waiting litigants and witnesses and spectators and curious rubbernecks and sensation-seekers and all the rest. In just over two weeks they would all be there, craning and whispering and sighing and hiccupping and dozing and endlessly shuffling in and out. I lit a cigar and gazed sightlessly toward the rear of the deep chamber and cleared my throat, gutturally and pompously.
“Quiet back there,” I growled, “or I’ll have to ask the bailiff to remove you! This is my final warning.”
Part of my words echoed hollowly back—“final warning … warning … ing … ing …” and I repeated the words, enchanted by the sepulchral effect. Had a psychiatrist seen me at that moment he would have sighed and clapped me in the booby hatch. Were all of us secretly a little crazy? I slid from the judge’s chair and leapt down off the bench and hurriedly left the courtroom to continue my search for Parnell and Maida. Enough of this summer fantasy … . I finally found them in the steel-floored filing vault of the probate court, downstairs, Parnell holding a recorded paper under his glasses and dictating stealthily to Maida.
“Jiggers!” I hissed from the doorway.
Parnell started and looked over his steel-rimmed spectacles. “Give us five more minutes and we’ll have it,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Now beat it before someone comes and discovers us. We’re not ready for that.”
“Excuse it, please,” I said, and I shrugged and went out and paid rather ponderous court to the lovely Etta, the probate registrar, a maiden lady who possessed more warmth and charm at sixty than most women manage to acquire in a lifetime. Had she been a little younger or I a little older I would certainly have considered making a play for her … .
“Oh, Polly,” Etta blushed, “you say the silliest things, really you do … .”
Parnell plodded out of the vault with his battered briefcase, Maida following him like a faithful gun-bearer, the two brushing past me and out into the main corridor.
“‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’” I told Etta, and left her blushing prettily, overtaking Parnell and Maida near the far end of the long marble corridor. “What’s the pitch?” I demanded. “I took a bath last week and I regularly anoint myself with Aladdin Salve—from the large economy jar. What’d you discover in there? Oil or a batch of Confederate twenties?”
“Oil,” Parnell said curtly, out of the side of his mouth, like a bookie confiding a tip on the fifth at Pimlico. “Wait till we’re alone, damn it. This stuff is hot.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, meekly clamping my cigar in my mouth and following them dutifully out to the car, like little Rover with his faithful flashlight.
Parnell had put on the rush act, he explained, because the lawyer for the estate was expected momentarily in probate court and the old man didn’t want to be discovered “raiding” the Barney Quill file. “I’m not ready for him yet,” he added cryptically.
He and Maida were radiant; they had dug out the probate records in the new file: Estate of Barney Quill, Deceased. The estate had been started the Monday following the shooting, the day I got in the case. Mary Pilant had filed the petition for probate of the will, listing, as required by law, a daughter, Bernadine Quill, age sixteen, as the sole heir at law, with residence at Three Willows, Wisconsin. The will left everything to Mary Pilant, and was dated—as the bartender had said—about three weeks before the shooting. The next important paper had been an appearance and notice of will contest filed by a Green Bay lawyer on behalf of a Janice Quill, individually and as guardian of the daughter, Bernadine, attacking the will on just about all the classic grounds a will can be attacked on, including undue influence and lack of testamentary capacity on the part of Barney Quill due to his excessive drinking and alcoholism.
“Janice Quill?” I said. “That would be the child’s mother—and Barney’s divorced wife.”
“Correct,” Parnell said dryly, “except that the lady does not concede to be the divorced wife; she has filed a notice and a flock of supporting affidavits claiming that the Wisconsin divorce between her and Barney was void because she had never been served with process or received adequate notice of Barney’s divorce action against her.”
“More Technicolor,” I said. “What’s her angle?” I went on. “Surely after all these years the dame must have known she was divorced. Why in hell should she be trying to undivorce herself now?”
“Money,” Parnell answered, hunching his shoulders and rubbing his dry palms together. “Just the same old dreary love story—money, money, money … . As a fine broth of a former Irish mayor of Chicago once told the graduating school children: ‘Boys and girls,’ he said, ‘remember when you go out into the world that money won’t buy happiness, money won’t buy respect, money won’t buy honor. Confederate money, that is.’” Parnell shook his head. “Don’t you see, Paul?—if this woman can dump this old divorce and the will, she will come in for her wife’s share of Barney’s property, the daughter getting the other share. If she can dump the divorce alone, even if the will is sustained, she’ll come in for her statutory widow’s third and certain other loot, come hell or high water, even if the daughter is left out in the cold. It’s as neat as bar whisky. And her Wisconsin lawyer’s no slouch either—I checked him already in Mar-tindale’s.”
“Yes,” I said, “but how can she expect to come into a Michigan probate court and attempt to make a collateral attack on a foreign decree of divorce? That’s verboten, isn’t it, under the ‘fu
ll faith and credit’ clause of the Constitution?”
“Generally, Polly,” Parnell conceded. “But she also alleges that she is initiating action down there to set aside the Wisconsin divorce. Furthermore, if she claims to be Barney’s wife, it seems to me that it might be up to Mary Pilant to disprove it.”
“Yes, Parn. Now it looks like we’ve not only got Lieutenant Manion’s murder case to defend but Barney Quill’s will and divorce as well.”
Parnell smiled. “How do you mean, boy?” he said. “What’s that to us?”
“Because this will contest and divorce business are plainly affecting our man’s chances to win this case. That’s why Mary Pilant and the rest of the Thunder Bay Inn crowd have clammed up so. Can’t you see? It’s to protect the goddam will, not primarily to hurt us. If they can protect their precious will, Mary Pilant will still get roughly two thirds of the swag, come what may, even if the former wife dumps the divorce—and the charming Pilant will get everything if she can sustain both the will and the divorce. So that’s why they can’t allow Barney to be a boozer and a rounder who was so addled and crazed by drink that he couldn’t draw a will and would do this thing to Laura Manion.”
“That’s just what I figured, too,” Parnell said, smiling dryly. “But I scarcely expected a mere criminal lawyer to see the point.”
“That’s why the bartender suddenly clammed up with the Manions,” I ran on, ignoring the shaft. “That’s why he’s now willing to make a bag out of Laura. That’s why Mary Pilant is willing to let our man possibly hang rather than let us get at the truth. It’s a fine kettle of fish—and I mean bass, damn it, not trout.”
“But what do we care about all this?” Maida said. “How can all this possibly affect our Lieutenant?”
“Because, my dear,” I said, “this rape—if I may use such an inelegant word in your sheltered presence—is the golden key to our defense. Anything that sheds any doubt on that brutal fact hurts our case.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Look, one of the biggest areas of possible doubt in this whole case is that a sober man in his right mind would do what Barney did. To the extent that these lovely people—whatever their motives —successfully picture Barney as a sober, God-fearing, un-pistol-packing Boy Scout, and try to pull down Laura Manion in the process, to that extent they cast doubt on our story—at the same time building up sympathy for the late departed. This sword has several edges, don’t you see? What’s more, it happens not to be the truth.”
“I see,” Maida said, frowning. “I think I’ll go tear that Mary Pilant’s hair.”
“I’d just like to walk barefoot in it—and show her the paths of truth,” I said wistfully.
“What do you mean when you just said the bartender had clammed up with the Manions?” Parnell demanded. “When was the little man ever unclammed?”
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “Things are breaking so fast I haven’t had time to tell you.” I told Parnell and Maida what I had just learned from the Manions about the bartender’s expression of sympathy the day after the shooting, and all the rest—this followed by his sudden aloofness. “It’s all tying in, now,” I continued. “He’s Mary’s star witness and her key man to sustain the will. The Lord knows what his slice of the boodle will be. Probably a cut out of the bar.” I paused.
“Let’s sell the plot to the movies,” Maida said, “and all take a trip on the proceeds.”
“A trip to the monkey house,” I said morosely. “Plot these days is anti-intellectual and verboten, the mark of the Philistine, the huckster with a pen. There mustn’t be too much story and that should be fog-bound and shrouded in heavy symbolism, including the phallic, like a sort of convoluted literary charade. Symbolism now carries the day, it’s the one true ladder to literary heaven.”
Parnell grinned and shook his head. “Ah, the woe of it, the impenetrable mystery. And, since the region is reputed to be somewhat murkier than most, it is better that what little action there is should take place in the womb.”
“Whatever are you two talking about?” Maida pouted, “I’m sorry I ever mentioned plot. The deal’s off.”
Parnell was smiling from ear to ear. “And what are you grinning about, you overweight old satyr?” I said. “I’m almost getting sorry I got mixed up in this incredible mess. If—if I didn’t see it I wouldn’t believe it.”
“The records show that old Martin Melstrand of town here is Mary Pilant’s lawyer,” Parnell said. “As you know, Martin’s a shrewd old probate and estate lawyer, but lazy as tropical sin. He won’t brief his case till he has to—and unfortunately our trial will be over and done before this will contest is heard. That’s still another good reason why our murder case should be continued—by then the will contest and all would be over and done, win or lose, and the heat would be off.”
“Hell, Parn,” I said morosely, “there’ll doubtless be an appeal from probate whichever way it goes—so a continuance in our case is no answer. God, what a maddening case.”
“But just think of the law, Polly, the law,” Parnell breathed ecstatically. “Think of all the sweet lovely law we’ve got to search for. I can scarcely wait to get at it. Shall we go home and start now?” He was like a boy uncrating his first bicycle.
“Starting tonight I’m going fishing all weekend, Pam,” I said. “I’m going to hole up out at the South camp. I’ve simply got to crawl off somewhere by myself and submit this case to a jury of my peers —the trout. And, it’s probably my last crack at fishing. Monday we’ve got to start turning over the law books in earnest.” I shrugged. “But if you can’t wait I won’t object to your getting a head start.” Parnell’s face fell and I recalled with a pang that he had long since drunk up most of his dwindling law library. “Just to play safe I’ll give you an extra key to my once,” I said, handing him the key. “Any time of the day or night, Counselor,” I said. “Remember, we’re partners now. If during your nocturnal research any strange dames come prowling around the place they’ll be my nieces. Invariably they’re my nieces. Send them firmly away.”
“Thanks, Polly,” Parnell said, soberly pocketing the key. “Thank you, my friend, I’ll use it tonight.”
“And there’s one interesting subject you might start brushing up on right off the bat,” I said. “The law of the right of a private person to make an arrest without a warrant for a felony committed out of his presence. Thanks to you, that subject is now right smack in the middle of our case.”
Parnell’s eyes lit up with quick eagerness. “You remembered to ask him?” he said gleefully. “You really asked him my question? Tell me what he said? That’s another one I dreamed up last night in my sleepless bed, Polly. Don’t you see?—it—it opens up vistas.” He paused and blinked his eyes and shook his head. “Beautiful rolling vistas of lovely law and instructions. Boy oh boy!”
At that moment Parnell looked almost indecently happy; like a man about to cast a fly over the steadily rising granddaddy of all trout. I envied him, for here was one of those rare and lucky mortals whose main hobby, at least next to whisky, happened also to be his profession: the jealous mistress of the law.
PART TWO
Trial
chapter 1
“Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye!” Sheriff Max Battisfore sang out in his clear baritone voice, holding poised the gavel he had just used to rouse the courtroom to its feet. “The Circuit Court for the county of Iron Cliffs is now in session.” He lowered his gavel along with his voice. “Please be seated.”
It was ten o’clock on Monday, the first morning of the September term. Most of the lawyers of the county were present and awaiting the call of the court calendar, seated in the reserved chairs which ran along the inside of the long mahogany railing. Parnell sat next to me. His hair had been freshly trimmed and he was wearing a brand-new suit of hounds-tooth gray that he had purchased out of his share of the retainer fee the Lieutenant had paid me. This was the garment’s maiden flight, and I observed rather wistfully th
at the tattersall vest had been banished. And where had he got that rich-looking maroon knit tie? The old boy looked really distinguished and, leaning over and whispering, I told him so.
“G’wan wid ya!” he whispered back hoarsely, beaming with pleasure.
“We will now take up the call of the criminal docket,” Judge Weaver announced quietly, consulting his printed calendar. He cleared his throat. “People versus Clarence Madigan,” he said. “Breaking and entering in the nighttime.”
The criminal defendants who had not posted bail and had perforce waited in jail sat arrayed in the jury box under the watchful eye of Sulo Kangas. Sulo now extravagantly motioned the defendant Madigan to go take his place before the judge’s bench. I smiled and winked at Lieutenant Manion, who was sitting next to the hapless Madigan. The Lieutenant frowned as Madigan stumbled and nearly fell stepping down out of the jury box. Madigan and I were old professional acquaintances from my days as D.A., and he grinned at me as he turned to face the Judge. “Poor old Smoky,” I thought. “He’s gone and done it again.”
Mitch Lodwick stood by the court reporter’s desk with his mound of pending criminal files. He fished into the first one and found the criminal information and, clearing his throat, began reading.
“State of Michigan, County of Iron Cliffs,” Mitch read. “I, Mitchell Lodwick, prosecuting attorney in and for the county of Iron Cliffs, for and in behalf of the People of the State of Michigan, come into said court in the September term thereof and give the court to understand and be informed, that Clarence Madigan, alias ‘One-Shot’ Madigan, alias ‘Smoky’ Madigan, late of the City of Iron Bay, in said county and state aforesaid, heretofore, to-wit, on the 4th day of July, last, at the city of Iron Bay in the county aforesaid, in the nighttime of said day, with force and arms, feloniously did break and enter the dwelling house of one Casper Kratz, there situate, with intent to commit a felony therein, to-wit: with intent to commit the crime of larceny, contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the People of the State of Michigan. Signed: Mitchell Lodwick, Prosecuting Attorney in and for the County of Iron Cliffs, Michigan.”
Anatomy of a Murder Page 22
