The Glass Village (24 page)

The Judge looked at his watch. “Andy,” he said, “why do you believe Kowalczyk's story?”

The old lawyer stirred. “You, of all people, Lewis!” he exclaimed. “How can you ask me a question like that? As a matter of fact, don't you believe him? You know you do.”

“Well,” said the Judge uneasily.

“I've even,” murmured Johnny, “given myself a hayride in a daydream. You know—you start thinking things. Especially when you have my type of mind …”

“What things?” demanded the Judge.

“Well, I see some three dozen people in this daymare of mine, last inhabitants of a decrepit community called Shinn Corners, getting together in a secret hate session and conspiring to alibi one another so that the furriner's guilt will be unassailable. Fact! That's what I've been thinking. Why? Don't ask me why. I suppose when you get right down to it, I don't believe Kowalczyk's guilty, either. Or, to put it more correctly, I don't
want
Kowalczyk to be guilty. I still have enough romanticism left to get a smug bang out of seeing right triumph and evil get kicked in the prat. That's my trouble, really. … A conspiracy of thirty-five people, not excluding tender kiddies! Oh, and Pastor Sheare as well. Of such fanciful nastinesses is sentimentality made. All to avoid seeing my nose.

“Let's face it, friends,” said Johnny, “we're making passes at a non-existent animule. I'm sorry, Judge, but if that Gilbert and Sullivan jury you finagled me into were to take a vote right this minute, I'd have to vote our suffering Josef guilty.”

“Before you start with your witness, Mr. Adams,” said Judge Shinn, “Juror Number Three will please rise!”

“That's you, Mert,” whispered Hube Hemus. “Get up.”

Merton Isbel got to his feet. He was haggard, but the wildness had gone out of his eyes and he looked like what he was, a sagging old man.

“Mert, you and I have known each other since we were boys hooking apples out of old man Urie's orchard back beyond the Hollow,” said the Judge softly. “Have you ever known me to lie to you?”

Mert Isbel stared.

“So I tell you now: If you so much as lay one fingernail again on the defendant in this case, Mert, I will swear out a warrant for your arrest and personally see to it that you're prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

The big old head slowly nodded.

“And what I have just told Merton Isbel,” said the Judge to the jury, “applies to every mother's son and daughter in and out of this room who's in any way involved in this case.” He rapped with Aunt Fanny's darning egg so suddenly that Prue Plummer jumped. “Proceed with your witness, Mr. Adams!”

As Casavant was sworn in by Burney Hackett, and Ferriss Adams went to work eliciting from him his background and long association with Fanny Adams and her work, Johnny watched Josef Kowalczyk resentfully. The man both puzzled him and wrung his heart. He was either the world's greatest actor or something was incredibly wrong. It grew increasingly hard to be cynical about him, and Johnny wanted above all to maintain his neutrality in a world of warring self-interests. … Where before the Polish refugee had been frozen in terror, now he seemed frozen in peace. It was as if the clutch of Mert Isbel's frenzied hands on his neck had been, in its dark taste of death, the fate he had dreaded from the beginning, the execution, the consummated dealing out of his punishment … as if he had been hanged, and the rope had snapped, and he was saved to face hanging all over again. No man could feel that fear twice. The knobby hands unconsciously—or consciously?—caressed the swollen throat. The welts, the pain, were—or were made to appear?—a reassurance.

Kowalczyk's beard was quite heavy now. Put a gold ring on a stick over his head, Johnny thought, and get him into a nightgown, and he'd look like a medieval painting of Jesus Christ. Born to surfer for the redemption of mankind. But mankind was in this room, a bunch of ignorant idiots breathing hell's fire down a scared killer's neck. Unredeemed trash in a dirty old pawnshop. The lot of them.

Kowalczyk closed his eyes and his lips began moving soundlessly, as they did so often now. The sonofabitch was pretending to pray.

Johnny could have kicked him. Or himself.

He struggled to pay attention to Casavant.

“Now Mr. Casavant,” Ferriss Adams was saying, “I show you the painting on this easel, the same painting on the same easel found in Fanny Adams's studio beside her body. During the course of your examination of the Adams canvases this morning, did you examine this canvas also?”

“I did.”

“Exhibit E, your honor.” When the painting had been marked, Adams continued: “Mr. Casavant, is this a genuine Fanny Adams painting?”

“Very much so,” smiled Roger Casavant. “If you'd like, I shall be happy to go into details of style, technique, color, brush-work—”

“That won't be necessary, Mr. Casavant,” said Judge Shinn hastily. “There's no question here of your qualifications. Go on, Mr. Adams.”

“Mr. Casavant. Will you tell the court and the jury whether this painting is finished or unfinished?”

“It is finished,” said the expert.

“There's no question in your mind about that?”

“I have said, Mr. Adams, that the painting is finished. Naturally there is no question in my mind, or I should not have said it.”

“I see. Of course,” said Ferriss Adams humbly. “But our knowledge is not on the level of yours, Mr. Casavant—”

“Please note,” interrupted Casavant, “that when I say ‘the painting is finished' I verbally italicize the word
painting
. By that I mean that the creative process of applying paint to canvas is over; I do not mean that no work remains to be done. There are mechanistic aspects to art: for example, when the canvas is dry, the artist usually applies a thin lacquer retouch varnish, which not only protects the surface from dust and the deteriorative action of the air—especially where inferior pigments have been used—but also to bring out the darks. The retouch varnish has the further advantage of allowing the artist to paint over it if he wishes to make changes. On the other hand—”

“Mr. Casavant.”

“On the other hand, this thin lacquer is a temporary expedient only. Most artists allow anywhere from three to twelve months to elapse, and then they will apply a permanent varnish made from dammar resin. At this point one might say that not only is the
painting
finished, but its mechanistic aspects also.”

“But Mr. Casavant—”

“I might interpolate,” said Roger Casavant, “in the aforementioned connection, that Fanny Adams had strongly individualistic work habits. For example, she did not believe in applying a preliminary retouch varnish; she never used it. She claimed that it had a slightly yellowing effect—a moot point among artists. Of course, she used only the finest pigments, what we know as permanent colors, which are remarkably resistant to the action of air. She did use dammar varnish, but never sooner than ten to twelve months after she completed the painting. So you will find no varnish on this canvas—”

“Mr.
Casavant,
” said Ferriss Adams. “What we want to find out is: What are your reasons for making the positive assertion that this is a finished painting?”

“My
reasons
?” Casavant glanced at Adams as if he had said a dirty word. He placed his joined hands to his lips and studied Fanny Adams's ceiling, seeking there the elementary language necessary to convey his meaning to the brute ears about him. “The work of Fanny Adams is above all characterized by an impression of realism, absolute realism achieved through authentic detail. The secret of her power as an artist lies precisely there … in what I might call her primitive scrupulosity to life and life-objects.”

“Please, Mr. Casavant—”

“In her quaint way, Fanny Adams expressed it thusly: ‘I paint,' she would say, ‘what I see.' Now, of course, regarded superficially, that's an ingenuous statement. Every painter paints what he
sees
. The esthetic variety of artistic experience comes about because two painters looking at the same object see it in two different
ways
—one as a disoriented basic form, perhaps, the other as an arrangement of symbols. The point is that when Fanny Adams said, ‘I paint what I see,'
she meant it literally!
” Casavant glared triumphantly at Ferriss Adams. “It is one of the great charms of her painting style. She never—I repeat,
never
—painted from imagination, and she never—I repeat,
never
—painted from memory. If she painted a tree, it was not any old tree, it was not the tree as she remembered having seen it in her girlhood, or even yesterday, it was
the
tree, the particular tree she was looking at, the particular tree she was looking at
now
, at that precise moment in time; in all its nowness, as it were. If Fanny Adams painted a sky, it was the sky of the instant. If she painted a barn, you may be sure it was the very barn before her eyes—”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Casavant,” said Ferriss Adams with a sigh, “but I thought you told me this morning … I mean, how do you know this painting is
finished?
”

“My dear sir,” said Casavant with a kindly smile, “one cannot answer a question like that in a phrase. Now you will recall that a moment ago I referred to Fanny Adams's work habits. They had one further oddity. Just as she never deviated a hair's breadth from the now-object, so she never deviated a hair's breadth from her work habits. I call your attention to the
F.A.
in the lower left-hand corner of this canvas, which is the manner in which she invariably signed her works; and I repeat for the information of the court and jury that never in the case of any canvas from Fanny Adams's brush, in the course of her entire career, did she stroke in that
F.A
. until the
painting
part of the picture was consummated. Never! However, that's a childishly oversimplified reason. When we deal with an artist we deal with a living, pulsing personality, not a lifeless thing under a microscope. There are esthetic reasons, there are emotional reasons if you will, for pronouncing this painting utterly, irrevocably, perfectly finished.”

“I think the oversimplified reason you've already given, Mr. Casavant,” murmured Judge Shinn, “will suffice.”

Ferriss Adams flung the Judge a look of sheer worship. “Now, Mr. Casavant, an analysis of the defendant's movements indicates that he must have quit these premises at approximately the time Aunt Fanny Adams was assaulted and murdered. Also, there is a statement, now part of the court record, made by defendant on the night of his arrest. We're interested in testing defendant's statement for truthfulness—”

Andrew Webster opened his mouth, but he shut it again at a sign from Judge Shinn.

“—for if in any particular it can be shown that his statement lies, there will be a strong presumption that his denial of guilt is a lie, too.”

Old Andy struggled, and won.

“In his statement defendant claims, Mr. Casavant, that a moment before leaving this house he pushed the swinging door from the kitchen open a crack and looked into the studio. He says he saw Aunt Fanny at her easel, her back to him,
still working on this painting
. Since that was just about the time she was murdered, and since you have pronounced the painting
finished
, wouldn't you say that the defendant, then, is lying when he maintains that the painting was still being worked on?”

“My God, My God,” mumbled Andy Webster.

“My dear sir,” said Roger Casavant with an elegant whimsicality, “I can't tell who saw what or when, or who was lying or telling the truth. I can only tell you that the painting on this easel is finished. For the rest, you'll have to work out your personal conclusions.”

“Thank you, Mr. Casavant.” Ferriss Adams wiped his streaming cheeks. “Your witness.”

Judge Webster strode up to the witness chair so determinedly that the witness recoiled slightly.

“As you've no doubt gathered, Mr. Casavant,” began the old lawyer, “this is a rather unusual trial. We're allowing ourselves more latitude—to say the least—than is customary. Let's take this in detail. A study of the relative times and certain other factors shows that the defendant must have left the Adams house at approximately the time Mrs. Adams was murdered, as Mr. Adams has stated—within two or three minutes, at most. The time of the murder is fixed as having taken place at exactly two-thirteen
P.M.
I ask you, sir: Isn't it possible for the defendant to have left this house at, let us say, two-ten, and at two-ten Mrs. Fanny Adams was still working on this painting?”

“I beg pardon?”

“Let me put it another way: Isn't it possible that in the three minutes between two-ten and two-thirteen Fanny Adams finished this painting—the last brush stroke, the initials of the signature, or whatever it was?”

“Well, naturally,” said Casavant in an annoyed tone. “There comes a moment—one might say
the
moment—when a painting, any painting, is definitely and finally completed. Whether that moment came
before
the defendant looked in, or
as
he looked in, or
after
he looked in, is not, sir, within my competence.”

“How right you are,” muttered Andy Webster; but Johnny heard him. “No, just another minute, Mr. Casavant. You have asserted that Fanny Adams painted only what she saw. Tell me, did she paint everything she saw?”

“What's that, what's that?”

“Well! Suppose she was painting the barn and cornfield as seen through her window. Suppose there was a pile of firewood in the lean-to within her view. Would she include the firewood in her painting?”

“Oh, I see what you mean,” said Casavant languidly. “No, she did not paint
everything
she saw. That would be an absurdity.”