“No objection here if the prosecution calls the Solicitor’s wife to the stand.”
“Pshaw!” said Jones. “Let’s get on with this.” He shooed the lawyers back to their seats.
“It’s getting too late in the day to start closing arguments,” he declared. “Court will reconvene at nine AM tomorrow.”
No sooner had those words left Jones’ mouth than the reporters bolted out the door. They raced out of the courthouse and down the street, bowling over pedestrians in their way, tripping and shoving, all the way to the Western Union office.
“All right, that’s enough!” shouted the clerk. “Sort yourselves into a line! You’ve all got some waiting to do.”
“The telegraphist, it turned out, had been busy the entire day. Some joker had tied him up in transmitting Webster’s Dictionary—every word of it.
“The rat!” someone declared. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Any other telegraph in this town?”
A last reporter strolled into the office with a cigar in his mouth. He was a little thing, young with prematurely thinning hair, and large round spectacles.
“Hello boys!” said the youngster, and then to the clerk, “Hello Sam!”
“Afternoon, Mr. Saunders.”
Saunders reached into his breast pocket and unfolded his dispatch.
“Please tell your man to put the dictionary aside for now and send this…”
VI.
The next morning, at precisely nine o’clock, Judge Jones gaveled the court to order.
“The court will hear closing arguments,” he declared. “To those in the gallery—please respect these proceedings by refraining from any outward reaction. If the dignity of this court is infringed in any fashion, I will empty this chamber without hesitation. Mr. Ward?”
The solicitor rose, straightened his jacket, and approached the jury.
“Gentlemen, you are about to embark on a momentous decision. Justice for the death of Ella Maud Cropsey is not just an imperative for her bereaved family, though their pain is foremost in our minds just now, and can’t be imagined in its fullest horror by anyone fortunate enough never to have been visited by such misfortune. Nor is it only for the victim’s sweet sisters, their youths now permanently blighted by grief. You also sit in judgment for young girls not yet ripened to full womanhood—and for girls yet unborn—that they may live without fear that ghouls in the night might take their lives.
“And yes, I used the word ‘ghoul’. For how else might we describe a man who would so cruelly strike a defenseless woman, and dump her helpless body in the river like so much trash? What kind of mind imagines such a plan, let alone sets it into motion…?”
He turned and faced Wilcox. “By all evidence, there is your man. In the course of these last days, you have heard all the proof you need to convict James E. Wilcox of this crime. You have heard he had the opportunity: he was the last person to see her alive, with a full twenty-five minutes of his time unaccounted for. He had the means: his employer, Mr. Hayman, testified to his brutish strength, easily able to carry timbers heavier than poor Nell Cropsey across his shoulders. And he had the motive: Nell had tired of him, and wished an end to their courtship. He was in love with her desperately, and her love was growing colder and colder. The defendant made up his mind to conquer or kill her. The devil grew bigger and bigger in his heart, prompted by his own hellish pride. Which among us has not felt that sting, when our beloved has turned away from us? Who has not known their measure of heartbreak? The difference is, only the depraved give in to such passions.
“At risk of belaboring the obvious, let us review the facts, and the insights we have gained here into the character of the accused…”
Ward launched into an exhaustive review of the case that took an hour and twenty minutes. The jurymen slumped collectively as the oration went on, oppressed by the detail and the stuffiness of the courtroom. Judge Jones went through an entire jug of water, and ordered the bailiff to fetch another.
“We’ve heard talk of suicide,” Ward continued. “The defense would have you believe that Nell was so troubled by whatever Wilcox said on the porch, she proceeded to throw herself into the shallowest corner of a dark, filthy river in the middle of the night. Troubled, they say, from separation from a man she barely spoke to anymore! Could any one imagine that light-hearted, happy Christian girl, who had just joined a new church, and who read Sunday school books and liked sweet music, destroying herself? Is there any person who could believe that a girl of her character, temperament and disposition, anticipating a pleasant trip to New York, committed suicide? By the sworn testimony of everyone who knew her, Nell Cropsey was incapable of such an act. To a person, all of them deny it was even a possibility. Who are we, utter strangers to her character, to say they are wrong? Who are we to convict her of self-murder, when she is no longer on this earth to defend herself from such calumny?
“Add to this the expert testimony of the finest physicians in this community. Ella Maud Cropsey was not drowned—she was struck on the head with a padded instrument. Ferrebee saw the wound on the head at the first autopsy. He is a barber and it is natural that he should have seen it before the doctors. The black blood in that bruise was caused by a blow. You know very well if you knock a hog in the head, black blood will settle under the wound. The condition of the brain attests to it, for it is usually one of the last organs to decay, but was in an advanced state of putrefaction when her body was recovered. The only possible cause is the injury inflicted by her murderer. The cause sits in the courtroom today.
“We have heard filthy intimations from the defense regarding the pristine condition of her body. Outwardly untouched by thirty-seven days in the water, still beautiful, how could she have been underwater for such a long time? Do not be fooled by idle speculation, gentlemen: the preservative qualities of Pasquotank River water has been noted for centuries. I have heard it said that fishermen had recovered leather articles from the Dismal Swamp that go back to the founding of our Republic. After a hundred years, they come up nothing more than slightly discolored. That quality, coupled with the coldness of the season, is all the explanation necessary to explain the condition of her corpse. Indeed, it might be said that God himself set the conditions to keep her intact—as divine testimony to the crimes of her murderer!
“There has been talk of a certain umbrella—a silk parasol—whose whereabouts the defense wants to make so much about. Why would Wilcox have bothered to return this object if it was his intention to murder the girl? In one respect, we all agree: it is difficult for a rational mind to apprehend the workings of a depraved one. Who is to say what the defendant intended by this gesture? It may well have been nothing more than a decoy, meant to put the victim at ease before enacting his heinous design. By all means, I say I know not why he returned the thing. But I further say, it changes nothing.
“Gentlemen of the jury, I suspect this is the most important trial ever held in Pasquotank County. Certainly it is the most momentous one. It has attracted much attention and large crowds, more even than the Cluverius case some years ago, in Richmond. The same Cluverius, you may recall, who was convicted and hanged for the murder of poor Lillian Madison, though there were only six minutes of time unaccounted for in his movements. Six minutes, versus the twenty-five Jim Wilcox roamed, murderous and at large in the dark!
“He sits there now, as cold as death and as relentless as the grave. That’s the sort of man who carries weapons and makes midnight assassinations. Such men have got the stuff in them to commit hellish deeds and the same stuff sustains them on their way to the grave. It comes from Hell and thence it returns.
“Nellie did not drown. She was killed by a blow, a direct blow, on the head. That girl was murdered and there sits the man who delivered that blow. Look at him again, if you dare! Cold-blooded as a snake. Have you ever heard of a more atrocious, midnight murder? Because she would not make up with him before going to New York, he killed her. I ask you t
o weigh the evidence and if you turn him loose, set fire to your courthouse and jail and burn them down. For you will have no use for them anymore. If the women of North Carolina cannot be protected, we had best burn the law books and dissolve the legislature, and return to a state of barbarism!
“One last point, gentlemen. Presently, you will hear from the defense that the State’s case is ‘only circumstantial’. ‘Only circumstantial’, as in merely one of external details, with no direct proof. In this way counsel will attempt to sow doubt in your minds. I will therefore tell you something about ‘circumstantial’ cases that he won’t: it is the way in which justice is served to those cowards who do their crimes in the dark, away from direct witnesses. It is the light of reason, vouchsafed to us by forensic science, penetrating the very citadel of ignorance. Cluverius went to his well-deserved death on the weight of circumstances. By such evidence, we banish the last refuge of the clever criminal—the careful choosing of when and where to commit his crimes. Circumstances are the great equalizers. Do not scorn them.
“Save your scorn for the fiend!” Ward exclaimed, pointing a crooked finger. “Respect his ‘rights’, yes. Weigh the evidence before you, yes. But by all means do what all of you know you must: solemnly convict him of murder in the first degree. Your community demands it. The family demands it. And most of all the soul of that poor girl demands it. She is in heaven now, but her body lies in a premature grave, five hundred miles away. Never again will she dance or play an air. Never will she know the joy of motherhood. Never will she know the satisfaction of seeing her children grow up, in a home as happy as that in which she was born!
“She cries out to us now—can you not hear her…?” And Ward raised his fists toward the ceiling, and pleaded unto Heaven, “For her sake, convict! Convict, for the love of God! Convict!”
As if he was spent, he let his arms fall to his sides. A thunderous wave of applause broke from the back of the courtroom, surging forward as the spectators leapt to their feet. Seated at the brunt of it, Jim and his lawyer could only hang on, red-faced and miserable. It was some minutes before the ovation died down enough for Jones’ gavel to be heard. He had been pounding it the entire time.
“I will warn those in the gallery again: there will be order in this courtroom! Mr. Aydlett, your statement please.”
Aydlett made the throng wait as he arranged his papers. Rising, he approached the jury box and took off his spectacles, folding and slipping them in his breast pocket. The eyes he exposed were red-rimmed and bleary.
“Thank you, Your Honor. Let it be said that the defense shares the State’s sympathy for the family of the deceased. It might well be asked, what could be worse than to bury a child, especially one as universally beloved as Miss Nell? How inconsolable would any of us be if placed in the position of poor Mrs. Cropsey? Who could not but admire the courage of William Cropsey, bearing up with such dignity under such circumstances?
“I can think of only one other family that has suffered equally. Only one that deserves an equal measure of compassion. They sit in the second row, behind the defendant. I ask you, gentlemen of the jury, to cast your eyes with equal sympathy on Mrs. Wilcox, the boy’s mother, Thomas Wilcox, father and former sheriff of this town, and his sweet sister, Annie Mae. Have they not suffered as well?
“The Cropseys, may God bless them in their loss, at least have the well-nigh universal support of the community. Who, I ask you, has sent flowers to poor Martha Wilcox? Who has given her son, who never knew a lick of trouble with the law until now, the slightest benefit of the doubt? How lonely the path they tread! How cold is the world they have known since last November! ‘Reproach hath broken my heart,’ wrote the Psalmist, ‘and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.’
“It is not given to parents in their plight to wear black, like the Cropseys do today. But if the state has its way, they will have their chance, soon enough…
He paused, fished his glasses out of his pocket, and cleaned them with his handkerchief. Then he fixed them on the end of his nose.
“As an officer of the court, I have had occasion to hear many speeches by my colleague, Solicitor Ward. The great majority of the time, he is as eloquent as he is well reasoned. But this time—my, what a hysterical presentation! When the truth we all agree upon, that a young woman is dead, is bad enough, what need we of desperate hyperbole? Does he not trust you think the plain facts are bad enough?
“We teeter on the edge of barbarism, he shrieks. But you, gentlemen of the jury, ought to be concerned less with a state of barbarism, and more with the laws of the State of North Carolina. Those laws hold that it is entirely up to the prosecution to prove its case beyond any reasonable doubt. Beyond a reasonable doubt! That is our standard, for what is the alternative? Conviction by the mob? The elevation of mere happenstance to evidence of guilt? The prosecution has presented possibly the most flimsy case for a murder in the first degree that I have ever heard in all my years at the bar. No murder weapon. No real motive, except resentment for a few childish insults. A suspect autopsy, by physicians with no experience in forensic examination. If you convict on this basis, then I would be the first to agree with my colleague—burn the law books! Dissolve the legislature! For such a verdict would represent not the triumph of justice, but the very opposite.
“Some of you are no doubt wondering why my client did not testify in his own defense. The answer is already before you—there is no need for him to testify, because the State has presented no case! What man need be obligated to answer for mere calumnies, mere innuendo? What man need even bother, when the source of such ‘evidence’ is shrouded in shadow, and may never be exhausted? Ask not why James Wilcox does not rise to answer these charges, gentlemen! Instead, ask the motives behind the charges themselves.
“‘Wilcox is indifferent,’ they claim. ‘He does not lend enough comfort,’ they cry. Perhaps, by the standards of certain others, the defendant seems more calm in the face of tragedy than most. But that is not a crime. Nor is my client responsible for the faculties given to him by God.
“And indeed, given the depth of bias against him, what could he possibly have done that would not have been taken as evidence of guilt? If he wept, the prosecution would construe it as a confession. If he had found her body, they would say he knew where it was the whole time. If he didn’t look for it, they would say he was concealing it. Every move of Wilcox was watched, every action criticized and even his face as he passed on the street was scanned and commented upon. Which of us—which of you, gentlemen of the jury—could sustain that kind of scrutiny?”
The town clock chimed eleven times. Aydlett pulled out his watch and sprung the clasp. As the jury waited, he adjusted the minute hand.
“Let us pass to the details of the case. It is the State’s contention that Wilcox’s whereabouts are unexplained for twenty-five minutes—from the time he left Nell on the porch, to when he met Mr. Owens on Riverside Avenue. This, I submit, is an utter falsity. Neither Mr. Ward, nor I, nor any of you can have any clear notion of how long the meeting on the front porch of the Cropsey home lasted. The only fact we have is that no one was on the piazza when Mr. Roy Crawford left the home, sometime after 11:30. It is entirely conceivable that Nell and Wilcox spoke until just a few moments before Mr. Crawford departed. Nor can Mr. Greenleaf or anyone else speak with authority on the pace the defendant adopted on his way to the Ives’ place. It was late, and it was dark. Perhaps he looked at the water. Perhaps he relieved himself behind some bush. What need had he to hurry?
“Mr. Owens testified for the prosecution. Yet he said that the defendant showed no outward signs of any struggle. His demeanor was normal. Does this sound like the aspect of someone who had just committed cold-blooded murder? Does this sound like someone who had just assaulted the girl he had patiently courted for more than three years? Mr. Owens stated his clothes were dry. But how could this be so, after the defendant sup
posedly had just finished dragging an unconscious body into the river? It seems that the prosecution not only holds that my client is a fiend—he also walks on water!”
This was a good line, but the gallery was in no mood to give an inch to the defense. There was only a smattering of laughter, which Jones hammered into submission.
“And then there are details that do not square with the others. The prosecution spent much time establishing that Miss Nell was finished with Wilcox, and about to drop him. She would not come to the door to answer his calls—she wouldn’t even take a piece of fruit from him! But it is also established that Nell reacted badly to the return of the pictures and the parasol. He left her on the porch, sobbing. But if Miss Cropsey was indifferent, why did she sob? Why did she not take back her belongings, thank him, and go back into the house, pleased that her wish for a break had been granted at last? Clearly, the girl had deeper feelings for the defendant than some have suggested here.
“That is not the whole of it. William Cropsey says the pictures never turned up at the scene. In all likelihood, they are at the bottom of the Pasquotank. But the broken parasol did turn up, in the front entry hall. Think about this for a moment: how could this be so, if Ella Cropsey did not return to the house? If she was in the process of being struck over the head and drug to the river, what opportunity would she have had to go back inside? Clearly, gentlemen, something about the prosecution’s account does not add up.”
“It therefore gives us no pleasure to insist upon the obvious: on the night of November 20, 1901, Ella Maud Cropsey drowned herself. She had the opportunity, motive, and means to do so. James Wilcox was Nell’s suitor for three years, and furthermore the only one she ever had. He had been loyal to her, and persistent in his attentions—until the arrival of Carrie Cropsey in the home, and his affections began to shift. Her coolness toward him—the petty refusals to answer the door—these were the transparent ploys of a ingenuous young woman to keep her lover’s attention when she felt it slipping away. A young woman who was, by all evidence, a soul of deep feeling. She kept his gifts, the pictures and such, even as she pretended to be indifferent. Until the night when he returned her gifts. Now it was he who was indifferent to her! She was surprised, and mortified, and her mask began to slip. For who has not felt the pain of a broken heart? Who has not felt it to be the worst sensation in the world, if only for a brief time? Young Nell Cropsey had never felt it before—none of it. It overwhelmed her. It had to be escaped. And the river was so close.”
Ella Maud Page 18
