A Stranger in the Kingdom (50 page)

“What do you think, Jim?” Justin said. “Does it look as though the jury's going to find the reverend guilty?”

“Charlie says you never know how a jury's going to vote until they vote, Justin.”

“Weren't those slides sickening?” Al said. “I don't think Reverend Andrews could do anything like that in a million years.”

“Me neither,” Justin said loyally. “But if he didn't, who in hang did?”

“That's the question—right, Jim?” Al said.

“That's the question, all right,” I said. “That's still the big question Charlie's got to find the answer to.”

“Well, I'm glad I don't,” Justin said. “I wouldn't know where to start.”

“Me neither,” Al said. “There's your folks, Jim. Your old man's waving to you. Must be the trial's about to start.”

“You didn't try to call us over at the
Monitor
, did you, Jimmy?” Mom asked me, when I caught up with her and Dad on the courthouse steps.

“Call you? You mean on the phone?”

“Yes. Twice after you left the phone rang, and both times when your father picked it up the line went dead.”

I shook my head. “I was on the common the whole time. Why would I want to call you?”

“Well, somebody did,” Dad said. “Probably some prankster with a warped sense of humor. If I find out who, by God, I'll muckle—”

“—onto them and throw 'em into the biggest snowbank south of Labrador,” I said.

Dad never cracked a smile. With each passing hour, it seemed he was becoming less optimistic that, as resourceful and determined as Charlie was, he would be able to prove the minister's innocence.

For once in his career, it seemed that Zack Barrows had all the evidence, and all the help, even he would need to get a conviction.

 

When the trial resumed, Zack called Julia Hefner as his next witness. Prof Chadburn's secretary from the Academy, a woman named Vida Potts, temporarily took over Julia's post at the stenographer's table.

Zack began by asking Julia if she could recall where she was on the morning of July twenty-eighth, a few days before Old Home Day. Julia said yes, that was the morning she went to the parsonage on a mission.

“What was this mission, Mrs. Hefner?”

“Well, some of the ladies of the church had talked to me and asked me to persuade Reverend Andrews to find more appropriate living arrangements for that LaRiviere girl. Frankly, they didn't think it looked right. Knowing her background and all.”

“Was that the only purpose of your visit?”

Julia replied by saying that she had also reiterated her plea to Reverend Andrews to look for a housekeeper, partly because if he wouldn't get rid of the girl, at least it would look better if he had another woman in the house.

“How did the minister reply to your request that he find alternative living arrangements for the LaRiviere girl?”

“Well, he got uppity. He said, very sarcastic, you know, ‘Would you take her, Julia?' I had the impression, Mr. Barrows, that he had . . . well, private reasons for wanting to keep the girl at his place.”

“Do you recall anything else that was out of line about the minister's behavior during your visit?”

“Objection, your honor. Nothing that Mrs. Hefner has told us so far indicates that Reverend Andrews was in any way ‘out of line' during her visit.”

“Strike the question,” Zack said. “Mrs. Hefner, did you notice anything else that struck you about the minister's behavior during your visit?”

“Yes, to tell you the truth, I did. I was sitting on the couch, and he was sitting at his desk chair, which was swung around facing me, and all the while we were visiting, I had the feeling that I was being looked at, if you know what I mean. He was looking at me and smiling in a way that made me uncomfortable—just the way he did once before when I asked him and his son to eat dinner with my son and myself. So as soon as I saw I wasn't going to get anywhere with him about the girl, I high-tailed it out of there as fast as I could!”

I was astonished by this outright lie.

Charlie, however, who knew the whole story was smiling broadly.

'Thank you very much, Mrs. Hefner. That's all,” Zack said. “Your witness, Charles.”

Still smiling, Charlie got up and walked over to the witness table.

“Julia, you've testified that Reverend Andrews sarcastically asked you if you'd take in Claire LaRiviere.”

Julia tossed her head. “Yes, that's so.”

“He wasn't serious, then?”

“Oh, he may have been serious and sarcastic at the same time. I think he knew very well that I wasn't about to take in a stray who had come to town with that filthy fair show. I had the strongest impression that he was determined to keep her right there at the parsonage, no matter what.”

“Why did you decline to have her stay with you, if you were so concerned about Reverend Andrews' reputation?”

“Well, Charlie Kinneson! I've got a teenage son I wouldn't have exposed to the likes of her for anything in this world. Unlike certain others I could name.”

“Julia, you testified that during your conversation in the parsonage study the minister smiled at you in a certain way that made you uncomfortable, and that he'd done this once before. Exactly what way is that?”

Julia turned red as a beet. “Well, you know. Bedroom eyes and all. He kept looking at my legs.”

“Now, Julia,” Charlie said with a very broad smile this time. “Who could blame any man for admiring an attractive young woman like you?”

Here the courtroom broke up. Even Julia laughed, more from embarrassment, I think, than for any other reason.

But Charlie cut the laughter off himself by saying loudly, “So he was looking at you in a certain way?”

“Yes. Absolutely. In fact, he kept smiling.”

“The way I am now?”

Again the courtroom broke out in laughter, and Judge Allen did nothing to stop it. I think that he may have felt that Julia deserved exactly what she was getting.

“So he looked at you and smiled. Was that when you invited him to dinner and said your son would be gone that evening and you two would have a ‘quiet little chat and a few brandies together'?”

“Objection, your honor! He's leading the witness.”

“On the contrary, your honor. In my opinion the witness was leading Reverend Andrews—straight down the primrose path!”

Now the whole courtroom sounded like the Saturday matinee in the Academy auditorium during a Three Stooges movie. But once again Charlie restored order himself by saying, “Mrs. Hefner, did you, during your first visit to the parsonage, invite the minister to dinner and tell him that your son would be out that night?”

“I can't recall where Bobby was going to be that evening, but I'm not ashamed of inviting the local pastor to dinner. It's customary, you know. Besides, I was desperate to get out of there. When you think you might be molested on the spot, you'll say any old thing.”

“Did Reverend Andrews say he'd be glad to come to dinner, if his son was invited, too, and did you say no, you had some private matters to discuss with him?”

“Objection, your honor, the defense attorney is entirely out of line himself to pursue these idiotic speculations.”

By now Julia had begun to snuffle into a little embroidered handkerchief.

“Sustained,” the judge said.

“Just one more question, Mrs. Hefner. Are you familiar with the old phrase, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman spurned'?”

“OBJECTION! This is disgraceful!” Zack roared.

“Well, Zack,” Charlie said, “for once, you and I agree. Strike the question.”

 

“You may call your next witness, Mr. Barrows.”

Zack stood up. “Thank you, your honor. I have just two more witnesses. I'd like to thank the jury for its patience and attentiveness so far, and ask only that each juror please pay particular attention to the testimony of these last two individuals, who will amply clarify the one remaining question in this case: Walter Andrews' motive in brutally murdering and maiming Claire LaRiviere. Sheriff White, will you please bring Resolvèd Kinneson forward to the witness stand?”

To say that I was astonished, to say that the entire local population of the courtroom was astonished, does not begin to describe our collective amazement as my outlaw cousin made his way down the far right-hand aisle beside the sheriff. He was wearing neither a suit nor his ratty old poaching clothes, but a clean pair of green work pants and a new green work shirt and new hunting boots. He was cleanshaven and his hair was slicked down, as though he'd just wet and combed it a few moments ago.

Zack began by having Resolvèd establish how he had written away for a housekeeper with Charlie's assistance and how Claire had shown up out of the blue one morning late last June, stayed a week, and then left.

“By the time she split the coop, I was laid up with a broken leg,” Resolvèd continued in a voice that was already half a snarl. “But as soon as I was up and around, I decided to get her back again. So on the night of August the fourth, I went out a-hunting for the woman in question, who I'd bought and paid for through the mail and then run off on me. I knowed where she was. I knowed she'd gone to ground at that parsonage, and I intended to snake her out. So around eleven, eleven-thirty I slipped up onto the property through the empty lot next door and past that old sugar maple tree without no top and so along beside them red bitterberry vines a-clinging to the porch. It wasn't any light on inside the house, but I can see good in the dark, always have, and I says to myself, says I, I'll just go 'round by the windows and take a look-see inside and see if she's to home. Well, sir, I slid up onto the porch real quiet-like and then I could hear two voices coming from inside the front room. I crept up closer until I could look in the window where the voices was. It was open some and I could hear everything very distinct, only now it weren't so much voices as this moaning-like, a-moaning and a-groaning, just like a heifer cow coming into heat for the first time. And by God, I stuck my head in the window and switched on the lamp that set on the preacher's desk, and there on that di-van, ladies and gentlemen all”—Resolvèd was on his feet, and Judge Allen had already begun to rap on the bench, but it was too late; unless he'd had a gun, there was no way in the world that the judge could have stopped my cousin, now pointing directly at Reverend Andrews—“there on the di-van, I see that big buck nigger setting over there beside Charlie Kinneson
a-putting the britches to my housekeeper
.”

The courtroom was in an uproar. Charlie was roaring objections, Judge Allen was banging for order, Farlow Blake was shouting at Resolvèd to sit down and trying to yank him forcibly back into his seat. Once again, Judge Allen had to call a recess, this time to talk to Resolvèd and Zack Barrows. I would have liked to be a little bird on Forrest Allen's shoulder during that session, but all I know for certain is that ten minutes later, when they reemerged, Resolvèd looked considerably subdued.

“Mr. Kinneson,” Zack said when Resolvèd resumed the witness stand, “would you please tell us in polite and appropriate language what you saw in the United Church parsonage study on the evening of August fourth when you put your head inside and turned on the light?”

With a snaggle-toothed smirk, Resolvèd said, “Yes, sir. I seen the preacher, Andrews, and the LaRiviere woman engaged in sexual innercourse.”

“Your honor, is that answer acceptable?” Zack said.

“It's close enough,” Judge Allen said dryly.

“What did you do then, Mr. Kinneson?” Zack said.

“Well,” Resolvèd said, “I weren't very god—I weren't at all well pleased with the situation, let us say. But I kept my manners and only said good and loud, in a pretty sarcastic way, ‘Excuse me!'”

“Did either of the two people on the divan speak?”

“Yes! He did, preacher fella there. He hollered, ‘Shut off that bloody light.' La-de-da Englishman's accent and all.”

“Resolvèd, I'm going to ask you just one more question,” Zack said. “Please be assured that you do not have to say anything further to me or to the defense attorney, Charlie Kinneson, that would in any way prejudice the outcome of any further legal dealings in which you yourself may already be involved. I'd just like to ask you if you're absolutely sure of what you saw on the divan that night?”

“I be.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

Charlie wasted no time with preliminaries. “Resolvèd, you say you looked in the window and saw the preacher and the LaRiviere girl engaged in sexual intercourse. Remembering Judge Allen's instructions to keep your language acceptable, what precisely were the people in the parsonage study doing?”

“Going right at it two-forty.”

The judge's gavel was poised, but except for a few suppressed laughs, the courtroom was silent.

“There are a thousand and one ways to ‘go right at it,' even on the relatively cramped quarters of a couch,” Charlie said. “Please describe exactly what you saw.”

Oddly, Resolvèd turned nearly as red as Julia Hefner had. I had never seen my cousin in any way flustered, and in other circumstances I would have been amused.

“Well, now. The first thing I see when I reached in and snapped on the light was the back of the girl's head. Blondish-color hair. Back of her neck. Back of her smock.”

“By ‘smock' do you mean a dress?”

“Smock, shift, gown, or dress, call it what you will. It was that rainbow-color one she wore down from Canady. It was all bunched up around her waist, and her legs and behind was nekkid as the day she was borned.”

“Was she lying down or sitting up?”

“You really want to get into all this smut here, Cousin? Well, the fact is, not to offend the judge's nor nobody else's ears but just to tell the strict truth, she was setting up and a-straddling him, if you must know. He was sort of slumped into one corner of the di-van, and his bare feet and bare legs was sticking out under her.”