A Covenant with Death (13 page)

“It wasn't hard to figure out, and Andrews was pretty upset. If this big dog had killed his sheep, why hadn't he stopped to feed? If his own dog had killed the big one, why hadn't his own dog been cut up some? Maybe the sheep dog had been the killer, and the big one tried to muscle in and got killed for it. Maybe. Maybe not. Andrews fretted about that for years. When he died in nineteen-twenty he was still fretting about it. Of course he was sorry he hadn't looked around more. He was sorry he hadn't asked for help. He was sorry he hadn't even thought to pen his dog up awhile and see if the killings would stop.

“But most of all, he was sorry he'd killed his dog—his friend for eight years, and just about his only friend.”

Parmelee stopped there and went back to his table to consult his notes. Unnecessary, of course; he was allowing time for his childish parable to sink in. After a minute or so he resumed.

“Or look at it another way. Suppose you have an only child, a little fellow, and you leave him home for an hour and when you get back the gingersnaps are all gone. You know what happened. But it's another thing when the door's been open all day and you live on a street swarming with kids and everybody knows the gingersnaps are out there on the kitchen table. When, as a matter of fact, the house is famous for gingersnaps.”

“God damn it, that isn't true!” Bryan Talbot leapt to his feet shouting. “Parmelee, you know that isn't true!”

Hochstadter was hammering away like a blacksmith. “Silence! Silence in this court! Mr. Talbot, you sit down! Tolliver, you sit him down!”

Talbot sat down. Parmelee did not look at him.

“Now let's get one thing straight,” Hochstadter went on. “I can't exclude you from this courtroom, Mr. Talbot, because the law requires that the accused be present throughout his trial. And you've behaved well so far. But I do have the right to see to it that you keep quiet. I can tie a bandanna over your mouth. And I will if I have to. You remember that, and you keep quiet.”

“I told him not to say anything like that,” Talbot answered conversationally. “I'd like to change my lawyer.”

“If the Court please,” Parmelee said, “I'd like a minute with my client.” Hochstadter nodded, and Parmelee went to Talbot and murmured. After a moment Talbot shrugged. “My client withdraws his last remark,” Parmelee said to the Judge. “And I apologize to the Court. This won't happen again.”

“Fair enough,” Hochstadter said. One thing I give him credit for: he never bothered with legal locution when free-and-easy colloquialism would do the job. “You go ahead, now.”

Parmelee went back to the jury. “Let me add,” he said dryly, “that the gingersnaps don't have to really
be
there. It's enough if the kids think they are.” Talbot nodded. “However, I'm not talking now about dogs or cookies. I'm talking about murder. My little fables were intended only to introduce a much more serious point: that what you have heard from the state is a complicated mixture of the true and the false. What is true, we will not contest; what is false, we will demonstrate to be false. And you will discover that the state's real case rests entirely on what is false—that, in other words, the state has no case at all. I am going to make one statement now that I believe with all my heart to be true, and that I do not think the state has refuted or can possibly refute,” and he paused, and looked at the jury with passionate honesty: “Bryan Talbot did not kill Louise Talbot.”

He had begun well, I saw. He had not only made an obvious point impressive, but he had done so in a light, unhorrific context. A dog story. A raid on the cookie jar. Those were a long way from cold-blooded murder, and the atmosphere in the courtroom had already altered sharply; the shadows, the smell of death, the icy dread and alienation, were almost gone. He had reduced horror and lust to pets and goodies, and I admired him.

He began again conversationally. “You know, I noticed something when the District Attorney was speaking. He said the Talbots' troubles began in nineteen-nineteen. It is now nineteen-twenty-three. The Talbots lived with their troubles—including Mr. Talbot's drinking—for almost four years. Mrs. Talbot's alleged attachment to another man began maybe two years ago. Now how come, if he's supposed to have killed his wife, which he didn't, Bryan Talbot waited so long? To plan it? To find some clever, foolproof way of doing the deed? To cover himself with a good airtight alibi? To arrange a complicated intrigue? Nonsense. This murder was a direct, unconsidered assault; and if Bryan Talbot were involved in any way do you think he would have failed to contrive some careful method of keeping himself out of it? Bryan Talbot, as I hope to show, is a man of some worldly knowledge, who has traveled a bit, who is accustomed to complex business dealings, and who is far less emotional and impulsive than the average man. I do not think it unreasonable to say that if he put up with the alleged situation at home for two years or more it was not because he was ‘biding his time' but because he hoped that it would eventually work out I want to talk later on about the complexities of married life—some of which I am sure you are familiar with; about the habits of marriage, the concessions made by both husband and wife, the mingled trust and distrust, love and hate, excitement and boredom that can exist under the same roof; and the way in which love, an elusive, indefinable, variable emotion, can support and sustain even the most troubled relationship. No.” He shook his head gravely. “I suggest that in the Talbots' marriage there was a strong love, a love that had suffered much but had kept them together through very serious difficulties. I repeat: Bryan Talbot did not kill his wife. Everything brought out by the District Attorney in support of his charge can also be interpreted as proof that Bryan Talbot could not possibly have committed this crime.”

It was glib; but I must report that right here I began to feel uneasy.

Parmelee went on, and on, and stopped only when he had begun to repeat himself and to bore people. By then it was lunchtime, and we recessed. The lines were drawn, and clearly. When we returned Parmelee and Talbot were conferring in urgent whispers. Parmelee pursed his lips, shuffled papers, frowned. He had the courtroom's attention; mine not fully because I digressed to note Hochstadter (intent, eyes bright), Dietrich (calm but I believe he had not yet decided what he would do if Talbot took the stand), Juano (impassive but somehow sorrowful), the Colonel (tense, like an old maid playing lotto), and Bruce Donnelley (expressionless and remote).

Parmelee glanced again at Talbot and said, almost casually, “Bryan Talbot.”

Murmurs and whispers, and the fans beating like surf. Bryan Talbot took the stand, Hochstadter rapped thrice. Talbot was sworn.

Parmelee stood squarely before his witness, his client, his ward, his prisoner, like the Commendatore brooding down upon Giovanni, and spoke in almost the same sepulchral bass: “Bryan Talbot, did you kill Louise Talbot?”

Bryan looked him in the eye and said, “No.” He then turned his head, flicked his glance over the jury, and said again, “No.”

Barring a hint of rehearsals, it was effective, and Parmelee allowed several seconds of silence. Dietrich did not play the game, and broke the silence in shrewdly good-humored tones: “Your Honor, I do think counsel might establish the witness's identity a bit more formally.”

“Nonsense,” Parmelee said, but after a few seconds, he asked Talbot to give his name. It was a childish bit of needling on Dietrich's part; customarily witnesses identify themselves before testifying, but it hardly seemed—although—now that
is
strange. After forty years as a judge I cannot tell you at this moment whether or not the law requires that a prisoner, testifying in his own defense, identify himself.

“Mr. Talbot, I want you to tell me if the account given by Mr. and Mrs. Hoyers of the tragedy that struck your marriage was, essentially if not in detail, true.”

Bryan's face tightened but he said, “It was.”

“And for a time it threatened your marriage.”

“For a time, yes.”

“Did you love your wife?”

“I did, very much.”

“Did she love you?”

“Yes. For a while, when that happened, she didn't. But she did before and she did after.”

“Did she ever threaten directly to divorce you?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just before she left for Dallas for the operation.”

“And subsequently?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“But a witness has testified that she told him of her decision to leave you, only four or five months ago, or three, and that she had so informed you.”

“That was not true. He was lying. Anyway he looked to me like a—”

“No, no, no!” Parmelee interrupted. “Mr. Talbot: just answer the questions. Do you understand me?”

Bryan subsided. “Yes.”

“Good. Now: you have heard Mr. Justin testify that on the night your wife died you left his billiard parlor at approximately ten minutes of ten. You telephoned the police at ten thirty-four, forty-four minutes later. Chief Harmsworth has testified that it should take a man no more than twelve or fifteen minutes to cover the distance. I ask you now why you took so much longer.”

“Well,” Talbot said, “I'm afraid I don't know for sure.”

“You had been drinking?'”

“Yes.”

“Were you drunk, in the usual meaning of that word?”

“Yes. I suppose so. I wasn't steady, and I don't remember much of the walk home. I remember stopping to sit on a bench because I was dizzy.”

“Did you fall down?”

“Yes. When I went to sit I lost my balance. I hit my head on the back of the bench and then fell on the ground. For a while I didn't feel like getting up. Then I pulled myself up and sat on the bench.”

“Until you felt better.”

“Yes. I remember that much because the dizziness got worse when I sat down but after a minute I felt better. Then I felt worse again and I thought maybe I should make myself throw up, but I got up and walked instead.”

“And how long had you been on the bench?”

Talbot shook his head. “I just don't know.”

“You then proceeded home?”

“Yes.”

“And how soon after you arrived did you call the police?”

“A minute or two. I'm not sure. I tried to revive her first.”

Parmelee zigzagged. “You were married how long?”

“Five years.”

“Did you ever strike your wife?”

“Never.”

“What were your plans for the future?”

“I planned to make a good connection in a larger city, perhaps Denver or Oklahoma City, or even on the West Coast. I am a businessman and I wanted to make money. I think I would have started sooner except for the trouble at home, and then there was always something doing in Soledad City so it didn't seem urgent, going away I mean.”

“Did your wife approve of those plans?”

“Yes. She was not happy here and was eager to leave.”

“Then you would say she looked forward to the future.”

“Yes.”

“Did she ever threaten to leave you for good?”

“Only at the beginning of our trouble. Not after that.”

“Did you ever have words about another man?”

“About that Rawlins fellow. I told her he was no good for her, that he was a small-town dope and she was a big-city lady, or would be when we got there. That she ought to stop punishing me.”

“Did you ever have words about anyone in Soledad City?”

Talbot paused here; not because he was in any doubt, but because he knew how badly Parmelee wanted to establish a contact between the deceased and someone—anyone at all—who might have had reason to strangle her. “No.” He was almost defiant.

Parmelee nodded. “Mr. Talbot. Those of us who knew Louise Talbot were aware of her great beauty. We also knew that she was much talked about. She was attractive in a rather uncommon way. The impression has been established that you were envied by many men. Were you ever made aware of that envy?”

Talbot nodded immediately. “Oh, yes. My wife was the most beautiful woman I've ever known, and now and then someone would compliment me on her looks. I don't know why people compliment the man in those cases, but they did. I suppose because the husband always seems to own his wife.”

“Would you say that occasionally that envy, that admiration, was accompanied by desire for her?”

Dietrich rumbled to his feet, objecting even before he was up, and explained: “Counsel wants to establish the possibility of an unknown party who might have been involved. That's his right. But I don't think he can ask witness for that kind of conclusion. If he wants, we'll stipulate that there's usually desire between the sexes.”

That was funny only because it was part of an exchange between two middle-aged lawyers neither of whom—earnest, well-fleshed, sweating a bit—could be imagined sparking a belle; they were nice homey fellows who managed one waltz and fell asleep over the strawberry shortcake. But the courtroom rocked with laughter in a sudden, gusty release of lust: blood lust, sex lust, laugh lust. The gust died quickly. A woman had been killed.

Hochstadter sustained the objection, and Parmelee made his questions more specific, but Talbot was no help. Any number of men might have desired his wife, but he knew of nothing. Only Rawlins. Parmelee droned on, industriously threading a woof of insinuation on the warp of Talbot's denials. He digressed again, and often. He retraced the route of Talbot's evening, of Talbot's marriage, of Talbot's frequent but peaceable drunkenness—“more amatory, it would seem, than homicidal”—and of Louise Talbot's life. He chugged into random corners, switching himself onto new tracks without warning. On and on and on, as though he knew that every hour spent in court prolonged Talbot's life by so much; that every redundant question answered repetitiously comported the infinitesimal possibility of a turning, a slight detour that might lead to confusion if not exculpation. Or that every crawling hour was a buffer between the jury and the crime; in his droning voice, in the enervating heat, in the passage of time lay forgetfulness. That day was wearying; Harvey Bump might have been writing in his sleep. By four o'clock there were empty seats in the courtroom.