A Covenant with Death (5 page)

Thursday the grand jury indicted Bryan Talbot for the murder of his wife, and Alfred Harmsworth went out and arrested him.

The indictment was made public at about ten in the morning. John and I were in the office, fanning ourselves and sifting esoterica. “Suppose there's a gas explosion because of a leak in the line, the line the company installed, but in the contract of sale the customer waived redress. Suppose he's badly hurt in the explosion, hospital, lots of bills, property damage. What can he do?”

John looked grim. “Did he receive a consideration for the waiver?” I nodded. “He could still fight it,” John said. “If the gas company was a public utility the waiver might be against public policy.” He brightened. “Ha!” he whooped. “Trespass! The gas company has no right to invade the house, outside the line, with its product.”

“How do you get money out of them for trespass?”

“You don't,” he said. “You—” and he shut up when the telephone rang.

“Ben.” It was Hochstadter. “They've just indicted Talbot and Alfred's gone to get him. I thought you might like to be here for the hearing.”

“I sure would. Half an hour?”

“Yes. See you.”

I told John.

“No kidding,” he said. “How'd they do that? Something we don't know about?”

“Circumstantial, I suppose. That's allowed, you know.”

“I bet it's more than that,” he said. “Sex somewhere.”

“You savages are always thinking of the one thing,” I rebuked him. “However,” and I felt a sudden excitement, “we may have first-degree murder on our hands. You'd better come over with me. You won't run into many of those around here.”

“You bet,” He sprang to his feet. “First-degree. Wow.”

We clattered down the ancient stairway and into the sunlight, which slowed us immediately. John was a good fellow to be with on a morning like that: broad and tan, extravagantly healthy, bright-eyed, flat-nosed, fine teeth, and with the look of a man who believes that the only surprises life will offer are very funny jokes. Eager and optimistic. We walked easy and fanned hard, and soon we were at the courthouse.

The courthouse had once been an indoor market, more than a shelter and less than an edifice. After the war a market building became almost superfluous and thoroughly inconvenient. Superfluous because truck farming diminished, retail stores proliferated, and canned goods became popular and cheap; inconvenient because the center of town proved—in our Lilliputian economy—the only tract sufficiently uncluttered by residences to qualify as a “business district.” Some of the livery stables became garages and the gasworks became a power plant. Our newspaper, the
Trader
, went from eight pages to sixteen, contracted to reprint “Mutt and Jeff” daily, ran a weekly book review by someone named Adeline Hawkins Pearsall (“The rule is,” Geronimo told me, “that women with three names are awful writers and women with two names are all right,” and in my lifetime his hieratic wisdom has required little correction), and a lesson in auction bridge. The
Trader's
editorials were generous and humanistic, incoherent, often fiery, occasionally bilingual; though the national news was late its datelines were never falsified because the newspaper's proprietor, Mr. Edgar Musgrave, was a man of pepper and probity. Also of small elegance and less syntax. He bumbled, and sweated beneath a Damoclean imminence of libel suits, averaging two or three retractions a week. He had no prudence, utter integrity, and an appalling innocence. He had composed and published one imperishable headline, cherished by only a few of us but with fierce and undying gratitude: a dentists' convention had come to town and he had headed the story
ORAL CONGRESS THIS WEEKEND AT TERRITORIAL HOTEL
.

But I was describing the courthouse. It had begun, sometime before 1900, as a great shed, rectangular and flat-roofed with simple wooden pillars in front. (I recall it as having then resembled the very oldest Greek temples, all post-and-lintel; but when I was a boy that comparison would not have leapt to mind.) A massive rectangular solid: wide doors and no windows in front, an unbroken row of huge windows down each side, a bare wall at the back. The windows, separated only by thick studs, began three feet off the floor and went up eight more. That was a lot of window; but they had admitted light and served as loading ports.

The remodeled building, dating from 1913, was not radically different, and it had a certain demented charm: the floor was four feet higher at the front. The contractor had decided it would be simpler just to tilt the building up. So it was necessary to negotiate half a dozen steps to reach the front door. A second wall had been added some eight feet in from that door, with a men's room at one end and a ladies' room at the other of the corridor thus formed, and room for a desk or an armed guard or a voters' registration team. All the fixtures here had irregular bases like boot heels to compensate for the tilt. The toilets, which faced the rear of the building—at least in the men's room—were set on slanted wooden pedestals so the seats would be level. A short man could let his feet dangle. A carnival atmosphere, like drunken women in spike heels. Double doors opened into the rear of the courtroom, and the floor continued to slope all the way to the bar of justice, which supplied the effect of an amphitheater: rows of wooden benches with tilted bases and level seats, stepping down to the pit. The bench, or altar, was itself level, fittingly. Behind it was the original rear wall of the building, and behind that an addition had been erected, an extension, three rooms: Hochstadter's chambers and mine, and between them an attorneys' room. Each with toilet and washbasin. The windows remained huge, admitting a dazzle of light, but now they seemed to rise as they approached the bench, adding to the majesty of justice. They were usually closed; unless we were granted a good breeze, the air without was warmer than the shadowed arena within.

John and I went up the steps and into the empty courtroom and down the aisle and around the bench, past the exhausted American flag. I knocked at Hochstadter's door; he rumbled something, and we entered. The Judge was seated at his desk making no pretense at work; he was playing with a cigar lighter shaped like a flintlock rifle, snapping it on and off, and when we had said good morning he put it down. “Well, this is a fine kettle of fish,” he said. That was his style. “Sit down.”

“What happened?”

“I'm damned if I know just yet. But the indictment's returned.”

“Who did Dietrich call?”

“Now that's interesting. He called the neighbors, the Donnelleys and the Lucases, and he called her parents, and Bryan, and a fellow named Rawlins, all the way from Dallas.”

“That's her home town.”

“Yes. But who is the fellow? There's something here we don't know about. And a doctor from somewhere. Here it is”—he shuffled a handful of notes—“a doctor named Hanford Selma. Also from Dallas.”

“Dietrich must know a lot that we don't.”

Hochstadter nodded gravely, frowning at Life and Death.

“Our own little Eden,” I said. “Thank God it's your three months.”

He leaned back and stared coolly. “Why do you say that?”

I raised a placating hand. “All right. I'm sorry I said it. I just don't feel up to a capital case yet.”

“Yet? You've been a lawyer for three years and a judge for one, almost, and you've had it very easy. I hope you won't squirm when the larger responsibilities come to you.”

I almost flushed, and felt deep anger, surely obvious for a split second; then I laughed and gestured at John and said, “Please. Not in front of the hired help.”

“Sorry,” he said. But his eyes were still grave and cool.

“Somebody coming,” John said.

We waited, and after a few seconds even we non-redskins could hear the footsteps. A knock; the Judge rumbled again; the door opened and Alfred walked in with Tolliver and Bryan Talbot and Oliver Parmelee. We all said good morning. Oliver Parmelee was the town's most distinguished lawyer, who had been admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court even before we were a state, and who was courteous enough never to say aloud that he, and not Hochstadter or—how much less!—I, should be on the bench. He was about fifty, a prissy man with minimal hair and four grown sons and a mysterious liver ailment; he was quite pale.

We were all looking at Talbot. The room was too small, nine by twelve beneath the high ceiling, and seven of us were crowded together. Talbot seemed sullen, but it was he who broke the silence: “I did not kill my wife,” he said in a low, tight, emphatic voice, the words spaced and clear: “I did not kill my wife.” His bruise was almost healed, barely a flush on the skin.

“The grand jury has not convicted you of murder,” Hochstadter said, “and you are not on trial here. The grand jury found that there was sufficient evidence to warrant your standing trial. Alfred has arrested you—at least I assume he has.”

“Yes,” Alfred said. “I booked him just now.”

“Very well. This is a preliminary hearing and the only legal action taken here will be setting bail. I'm sure Alfred's told you, though, that anything you say from now on may be used against you.”

“I did not kill my wife,” Talbot said, and his face was inflexible; his eyes glittered. He was hating.

“If you'll all be seated,” Hochstadter said. “Three on the couch, there. Oliver, this armchair. We're a bit crowded, I'm afraid.” He threw back his head and ran a hand over his silvery hair and pursed his lips solemnly. “Alfred, if you'll summarize.”

“Yessir,” Alfred said. He reached forward to slide a thin sheaf of papers onto the desk. “I have here the substance of an indictment handed down this morning by the grand jury—all the numbers and descriptions are there, and the dates—charging Bryan Talbot with the willful and premeditated murder of his wife Louise Talbot. They indicted for first-degree but I guess you and the jury have some leeway there. Acting on the bill, I've arrested him and have now brought him before a magistrate as required by law.”

“Very good,” the Judge said. “And I assume, Oliver, that you have been retained by Mr. Talbot?”

“That's correct,” Parmelee said, and his voice was huge, always a surprise: a great operatic basso, though he looked like a breathless, paunchy tenor. “We'll answer to the indictment and plead at the proper time, and we now request that Your Honor set bail and a date for the arraignment.”

“Yes. Now you understand, Mr. Talbot, about bail? Ordinarily, for a lesser offense, you may not leave the state, and you are required to be available, that is, findable, so to speak, whenever the authorities require your presence, failing which you have committed a further felony.” Talbot only glowered. “I am empowered by law to set an extremely high bail for a crime of this magnitude, or to deny bail altogether, because obviously any further felony would not weigh heavily on the mind of a man guilty of first-degree murder.”

“I am not guilty of first-degree murder or any murder,” Talbot grated with the same baleful intensity.

“Please, Bryan,” Parmelee said.

“You may not be,” Hochstadter conceded. “And you are a citizen of some repute. I will set bail at five thousand dollars. Unless there was eyewitness testimony before the grand jury.”

“No,” Alfred said.

“I'll go that bail myself,” Parmelee said immediately.

Hochstadter's eyebrows arched. “That's highly irregular.”

“But perfectly legal,” Parmelee said. “It's my feeling that this indictment is outrageous, as I think you'll agree when you've seen what it's based on. I am absolutely persuaded that Talbot is innocent.”

“However that may be,” Hochstadter answered, “I'll take your signature here for the bail.” He drew a pince-nez from his breast pocket, adjusted it, peered down at the papers, and scratched away with a pen. He reminded me of celluloid cuffs and sleeve garters.

When he was through Parmelee signed the paper, and Alfred stood up. Hochstadter nodded, and Alfred and Tolliver clomped out. “I'll talk to Dietrich today,” the Judge said, “and arrange for a formal arraignment as quickly as possible. How's tomorrow morning at ten? You and he”—he was addressing Parmelee, and continued to nod at Parmelee even when his words were for Talbot—“can get together and decide how much time you want before the trial. Mr. Talbot, under the circumstances I'd like you to stay in Soledad County, and preferably in the city. When I've read the minutes I may decide to set a new bail.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Talbot said. “I did not kill my wife.”

“That's all for now,” Hochstadter said.

“Come along, Bryan.” Parmelee took Talbot by the arm, bowed slightly to the Judge, and led his client out of the room.

For several moments Hochstadter stared down at the papers on his desk as though the whorls and chicken tracks expressed a truth of great importance. He shook his head. “It's no fun,” he said bitterly. “You go along now. I want to call Dietrich and see what the hell this is all about.”

John and I left him there. We were much sobered.

The next morning Talbot pleaded not guilty. Hochstadter and Parmelee and Dietrich conferred and the Judge announced that the trial would begin on Tuesday, May 22nd. Emil Dietrich announced that he would prosecute personally, which was no surprise. He was the county District Attorney. The fire of his political ambitions had been banked during the war when his name alone disqualified him for public adulation; the high school had discontinued its course in German and the good ladies of the town labored long on wristers and mufflers for our side. But Dietrich was once more a first-class citizen and a candidate for practically anything. His announcement was not good news for Talbot. I noticed again how quickly we all assumed that an indictment was a conviction; by Friday afternoon a dozen townsfolk had asked me why Bryan would do a thing like that. “He didn't,” I said; and they were startled and asked how I knew and I had to add, “until the jury says he did, he didn't. You remember that.”