At this story, Ollie resumed twisting her gloves. William Cropsey showed no reaction, preferring to look out the window.
“Does the defense have answers to every question?” asked Aydlett. “I assure you it does not. Alas, we don’t have to explain all. It is incumbent upon the prosecution to do so. It is their responsibility to prove to you, gentlemen, that the simpler and more consistent story should be put aside—that Nell Cropsey committed suicide—in favor of a tissue of implausibilities. The fact that they have not should weigh in your determination that there exists some reasonable doubt—”
A commotion broke out at the back of the gallery. In unison, three entire rows of onlookers rose up, gathered coats and hats, and filed for the exit. Many looked toward Wilcox with undisguised contempt on their faces.
“What is this?” demanded the judge. “Order! ORDER! Spectators will remain seated…!”
More rows joined the walk-out. Aydlett stood dumbstruck. Wilcox, after a peek at the exodus behind him, turned back bemused.
Jones tossed his gavel on the bench in disgust. The interruption went on, as the less-committed of the protestors weighed the diminishing power of the demonstration against their curiosity to see what happened next. By the time the evacuation petered out, more than a quarter of the spectators had left the courtroom. As those who had left were entirely white, the black onlookers were left standing in the back with all the benches in front of them empty. None of them ventured to take the abandoned seats.
“Well, that is unfortunate,” said Jones. “In all my years on the bench, I have never witnessed such a shameful display. Does anyone else wish to leave? No? All right then: bailiff, the doors will remain sealed for the balance of the defense’s statement.”
He bid Aydlett continue.
“Er, as I was saying…what was I saying…?”
“'It is incumbent upon the prosecution…’” said the court reporter.
“Yes, it is incumbent on them to prove their story…as provided by our laws…which protect the rights of the accused…as Sir Blackstone so notably wrote: ‘it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer…’”
As Aydlett rambled on, it was clear that the walk-out had rattled him. Where he seemed to be speaking ex tempore before, he now needed a sheaf of notes, pulling them out as the jurymen fidgeted.
“…the ingenuity of the prosecution cannot tear away the pillars of evidence which made it almost impossible for Wilcox to have done murder that night…if you convict on this basis, if you take away an innocent man’s life…who is to say some Fury will not dog you for the rest of your life…?”
The air was split suddenly by the peal of an electric bell.
“Fire alarm,” said the judge. “Bailiff, open the doors, please.”
The depleted gallery emptied into the courtyard. The court officers waited behind the building as the fire wagon made the short trip from a block away. It took a while for the firemen to check every room in the building. In that time Jim stood in handcuffs, surrounded by police who kept an eye out for the lynch mob. Jim was the least concerned of them, letting the weak March sun warm his face. It was the first time in months he had stood in direct sunshine.
“Nothing. No fire,” reported the Chief.
“Did anybody get a look at the party that pulled the alarm?”
“No sir.”
When the court was gaveled back into session, the delay stood at thirty minutes.
“The citizens in the back of the room. Yes you all…” indicated Jones.
Not used to being acknowledged, the Negro attendees collectively gaped at the judge.
“Under the circumstances, there is no reason for you to loiter there. Find seats, all of you.”
No one moved as a sudden frigidity struck the room. But gingerly, a fellow in a checkered suit and twenty-year-old stovepipe hat worked his way onto the back bench. Others followed, until they filled most the seats evacuated by the walk-out. Some of the whites near them collected their things and moved away from them. By the time everyone had sorted themselves, the rows were neatly segregated.
“If any of you have complaints about the seating arrangements,” said the judge, “You may address your complaints to those of your neighbors who have attempted to disrupt these proceedings. Not to gratify them with further delay, but I must say I am disgusted with the behavior of some in this community. If it results in miscarriage of justice—well, that is something they will have to live with.
“Now, Mr. Aydlett: I intend to give you the greatest possible latitude here. Would you like to start over?”
“That won’t be necessary, Your Honor.”
“Very well then. Please continue.”
If the walk-out had slowed the defense’s momentum, the false alarm broke it. A strange air filled the court that made its contours unrecognizable, its energies alien.
Aydlett was at half-strength now, voice quavering. As he floundered the expressions on the faces of the jurymen went from studied skepticism to dismay; some turned outright sympathetic.
“…it is manifestly obvious that Nell’s order to Jim to ‘pull’ was not meant to be offending, and the defendant’s statement that he was ‘tired of being a lackey’ was not addressed to the young lady but to her sister Carrie…sorry, I mean Lettie. On the contrary, he referred to the deceased several times…” and he checked his notes, “…as ‘a true, noble little woman…’”
“And noble she was, in death as well as life. It is true that only the ones who loved her…and the ones she loved in turn — can speak to her significance to them. I saw her on the street, like many of you, but I didn’t know her. Our horror at her death springs not from personal experience, but from a personal stake we all believe we have in her. For was it not Edgar Allan Poe who declared: ‘When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.’ The Cropseys are Northerners, but many of us in the South understand the value of poetry. Some say it is all all we have left, after the War. Every death must have its reason, and the death of a beautiful girl, its poetry. But not every death is worthy of Mr. Poe, my friends. Some deaths have no rhyme, no meter. They are murky, and pointless. Not every Jesus has had a Judas. Let him who is without sin presume the worst of this poor wretch!
“Mr. Ward says that this may be the most important trial in the history of this county. On this, we agree: in the rows behind me are reporters from Philadelphia, Norfolk, Baltimore, St. Louis and beyond. They are all watching and, yes, many are doubting that in this fever of retribution, the defendant will even get a fair trial. Those hotheads below the Mason & Dixon line—how can they be trusted with the responsibility of upholding justice? The challenge is before you now, gentlemen, to prove them all wrong. Show them that we understand what the presumption of innocence means. Show them that we refuse to compound tragedy with outrage. Find the defendant innocent, for his sake, and for yours.”
Aydlett sat down. There was no applause this time.
“Are you finished?” asked Jones.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Very well. Court stands in recess for lunch, after which the jury will receive its instructions.”
Aydlett spent the recess at a saloon down on the waterfront. The place was a cut below the kind frequented by lawyers: plank bar with gaps, working-class clientele, card-games prohibited, sawdust-strewn floor lumped with tobacco spit. But it was dark and out of the way, and he was seldom disturbed by reporters there. The barkeep knew him from years of court recesses, and never asked questions an officer of the court couldn’t answer.
“Afternoon Ed! Hungry?”
“Starved.”
“We got some ham steak.”
“That would be swell, Charlie. And the usual.”
It was an out-of-the-way place, but they were still talking about the case. The volume of chatter dipped discernibly when he walked in. It only rose to normal as he took a stool,
lit a smoke, and minded his own business. The barkeep slid a bourbon in front of him.
As he regarded the glowing cherry of his cigar, he wondered if he should have some regret about how his closing statement had gone, but couldn’t summon the will for honest self-recrimination. From his experience, what an attorney said at the end of a trial bore little relation to success. Some of his finest orations didn’t stop his clients from being convicted; some of what he regarded as his least had swayed juries to acquit. The longer he served, his sense of futility grew, and the more he drank. This would be a three-bourbon recess.
“Hello, mister.”
A boy of ten or eleven was standing behind him. He had his cap off, and he was barefoot in the sawdust.
Aydlett slipped a two-bit piece from his watch pocket and flipped it to the boy.
“You could have waited a little longer after that walk-out.”
“Only if you wanted someone to see me,” replied the other as he examined the coin.
“On your way then. But not too far away, just in case.”
The boy gave him a one-finger salute and disappeared.
He was just finishing his ham steak—a bit too dry for his taste, but it filled him up—when a stranger took the stool next to him. It only took a glance for Aydlett to mark him as a reporter, and a lean and hungry one at that.
“No comment,” he said before the man opened his mouth.
“Bill Saunders, Norfolk Dispatch. I haven’t asked you anything yet.”
“No comment.”
“Well, maybe you can just listen for a minute,” said the other. He signaled the barkeep for two more of what Aydlett was drinking.
“It’s your money,” said the counselor.
“What did you mean when you said the Cropseys were Northerners? Were you suggesting Miss Nell was a little naive to our ways here?”
Aydlett used his bread to sop up the juice from his chop.
“How about that walk-out? Ever see anything like that?” Saunders went on. “Strange how somebody pulled that fire alarm just a few minutes later. If I were a betting man, I’d say the two events had different causes. Maybe two different intentions.”
The drinks arrived. Aydlett didn’t nurse this one. After knocking it back in two swallows, he stood up and gathered his things.
“Don’t know anything about it,” he said. “If I didn’t know you’d expense it, I’d thank you for the drink.”
The alcohol made him slow with his coat sleeve. Saunders stood and guided his elbow through the hole.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. By the way, hard to see how he slips the noose now. Wilcox.”
Aydlett smiled at this, and with a sudden urge to reciprocate, gave Saunders something better than the dictionary to telegraph:
“It’s quite the opposite, young man. I think that walk-out saved that boy’s life.”
The decision went to the jury in the late afternoon of the 21st. As they filed out to their empty jury room, and to Aydlett’s experienced eye, the jurors looked nervous, as if troubled by the magnitude of their responsibility. The judge had duly impressed upon them that although the State’s case was circumstantial, their decision must be unanimous, and beyond a shadow of a doubt. But there was no anonymity at the county courthouse. Every face on the jury was known to everyone in the gallery, and in many cases their addresses, names of their businesses, their relatives and their friends. There were rumors of boycotts to come, and even bodily harm, if Wilcox was acquitted. The higher-minded among the citizens denounced the threats, deeming them unworthy of a civilized community. But no one could deny that someone made them.
As Jim stood up to have his wrists shackled, he said to Aydlett, “I had the most peculiar dream last night.”
“What was it?”
“That I was hanging by a gooseberry bush,” the other replied, grinning.
The accused was returned to his cell to await the verdict. When he got there a covered plate of food was waiting for him: a whole roast chicken and potatoes prepared by his mother and sister. He offered Aydlett a drumstick. The latter declined, and watched Jim disembowel the chicken without the utensils that he, of course, was denied by his jailors.
“I won’t have much time to do it, but don’t fear…” said Jim, mouth full. “I will issue invitations to my execution by two weeks before at the earliest. I won’t forget you.”
“If they take more than a day to decide, you are acquitted.”
“How about a wing?”
Aydlett sat with Jim for a couple of hours, then went home without a detour to the saloon. He didn’t take off his court clothes; he expected to be called back to the courthouse at any moment. He dropped off to sleep in the reading chair in his study. When he woke with a start, he was surprised to see sunshine streaming through the windows.
The decision indeed took more than one day. At nine-thirty p.m. on the 22nd, after thirty hours of deliberations, the jury reported it was ready to come out.
The court reconvened at ten p.m.—including a throng of two hundred spectators in the gallery.
“Has the jury reached a verdict?” asked the judge.
The foreman stood. “We have.”
“The accused will stand.”
Jim took his feet. He had no gum this time, and his shirt front was stained by fingers of chicken grease.
“What say you?” asked Jones.
“In the first degree,” replied the foreman.
“You have not answered the question. Is he guilty?”
“He is guilty.”
The crowd loosed a collective exhalation of relief. Chatter erupted, but the judge hammered it down.
“I will tolerate no more disruption,” he said. “Upon further consideration of the events in the last few days, it is the opinion of this court that the behavior of certain parties has been utterly contemptible. Let it be known: if these acts were pre-planned, and if the names of the ringleaders ever become known to me, I will with no hesitation cite every man, woman and child for contempt. The good name of the people of this county requires nothing less.”
He turned his imperiousness upon Jim. The latter was pale now, and could not meet the judge’s eyes. Aydlett put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
“The judgment of the court is that the prisoner at the bar, James Wilcox, be remanded in the custody of the sheriff of Pasquotank County, and that he be taken to the jail from whence he came, to be securely kept in solitary confinement until Friday, April 25, 1902, and that on the said day, between the hours of ten in the forenoon and three in the afternoon, he be conveyed to the place of public execution, in said county, and be hanged by the neck until he is dead, dead, dead.
“May God have mercy upon your soul.”
As they led him out, Jim remarked loudly enough for the farthest person to hear: “That’s a damned common jury, if they couldn’t even get the verdict out right!”
The Bedroom
I.
The Cropseys moved out of Seven Pines in October of the following year.
“We are quitting this house next month,” William Cropsey declared at Sunday supper, as if announcing a beach outing. “We will be renters no longer.”
“Are we leaving Elizabeth City?” asked William Douglas, in a tone that was perhaps too hopeful.
“No we are not, young man. There is a house on Park Drive that is perfectly suited to us.”
“Am I getting out of school?”
“Nothing else will change.”
Later, over his evening dish of prunes, he deigned to explain more of this reasoning to Ollie. The new property, he said, was smaller, but had ample room for the family to continue farming. The cost of the mortgage was less than the rent for a waterfront residence.
“Yes…but considering what’s happened, wouldn’t we consider leaving?”
“We came to this city for a reason,” he replied, “and none of those reasons have changed.”
Three weeks later, a moving
van arrived at their front gate. The two big percherons pulling it were let loose to graze on the front lawn. Assisted by the Cropsey men, the teamsters set to work wrangling the big pieces of furniture into the back.
It fell to Ollie to pack the contents of the bedroom she and Nell had shared. In all the months since, Ollie still slept on her side of their bed. The bottom two drawers in the bureau still contained Nell’s waists and pantalets, the armoire her dresses, the foot chest her stockings. Heart heavy, Ollie folded them into a trunk. She waited until the very end—when the bed was gone—to take down the little shrine she erected to her sister: the pictures of Nell that Jim had returned that night, a little candle, a bowl of dried posies. An embroidery of a bluebird Nell had left unfinished. Dismantling it all made her eyes wet with the kind of tears that did not pour forth freely, but stood in her eyes thick and stubborn, like incipient blindness.
With no hankie at hand, Ollie dabbed her eyes on the window curtains. From there she gazed down on her mother as she supervised the loading. It was a warm day for October, so Mary Cropsey brought iced tea to the laborers. Then she chided them when the broadcloths were improperly secured and her furniture was exposed to scratching.
Though her mother seemed back to her normal self, the road had not been smooth. When Jim was sentenced to hang, she never took outward pleasure in the news, but left her bed to resume her household routine. Six months later the verdict was thrown out by the State Supreme Court—pointedly because of the disruptions at the county trial. As howls of outrage swept through the town, Mary Cropsey wept and fled back to her bed.
Ella Maud Page 19
