Blue Moon (18 page)

“Well,” I said, looking in the direction of the magistrate, “his son for one.”

“Are you indicating His Honour?”

“Indeed. The judge's son.”

I then named two lawyers, a furrier, a druggist, a financier, a merchant, and two offspring of leading Hamilton families before the very startled and crimson-faced Burbridge interrupted me, ordering me to stop my tally at once.

Next, I was asked to testify against Bill. I refused to do so. An irate Magistrate Burbridge told me I would answer or be held in contempt. God help me, my pent-up anger at my former lover was so great that I uttered my greatest falsehood; I testified Bill was the father of the baby and had killed him. Up to that point, Bill had not looked in my direction. At that moment, he tried to do so, but he was unable to lift his head, so weighed down was he by the apparent
absurdity and the spitefulness of what I claimed. When Burbridge committed him to trial, he simply stated: “I haven't a thing to do with this. I am innocent.”

Immediately following the baby murder hearing, the preliminary hearing in the torso case was heard. A confusing array of findings was presented: the possible remains of John Dick—charred bones and teeth—found at Carrick Avenue; bloodstained black shoes at Rosslyn Avenue; the horde of cash and HSR tickets also found in my father's house. The
Spectator,
an ardent critic of the way in which the bus company habitually lost money, took special delight in highlighting this discovery.

On that day, I again implicated Bill in the murder of John Dick. After hearing a very confused array of so-called facts and vague assertions, Burbridge committed Bohozuk, my father and myself to trial for the murder of my husband. My mother was freed of the murder charge because of insufficient evidence but she was held as a material witness.

The same journalist who was intrigued by my wardrobe was also confused by the testimony he had heard, but he rejoiced in the proceedings: everywhere in Hamilton, he gleefully observed, “in beverage rooms, at lunch counters, in stores and offices, on streetcars and buses—the two murders are being argued and discussed, Rumours of all kinds abound, many wildly fantastic.” In a way, I had brought the various elements in the community together. I was selling newspapers.

Four months later, in September, the Grand Jury returned a true bill on both indictments. The trial for the murder of John was set for the seventh of October, on which day the Crown moved to have me tried separately. When that request was granted, the other two accused and their counsel left the chambers. Up to this point, I had been represented by three different lawyers in turn. Only at this point did Mr. Sullivan begin to represent me. In addition to the instructions on hair, makeup and wardrobe he gave me at that time, he also jotted down for me his ground rules in selecting the jury.

Everything pertaining to the prospective juror needs to be questioned and weighed: his nationality, business, religion, politics, social standing, family ties, friends, habits of life and thoughts, and books and newspapers he reads.

Involved in it all is the juror's method of speech, the kind of clothes he wears, style of haircut, and above all, his business associates, residence, and origin.

An emotional, kindly and sympathetic man, if chosen as a juror, will place himself by his imagination in the dock; really, he is trying himself.

Retain Irish, English and Germans, agnostics, Jews. No prohibitionists, Calvinists, Lutherans, Baptists, or wealthy men.

You may defy all the rest of the rules if you can get a man who laughs. Few things in this world are of enough importance to warrant considering them seriously. A juror who laughs hates to find anyone guilty.

You want imaginative individuals. You are not interested in the morals of a juror. If a man is instinctively kind and sympathetic, take him.

Sullivan, I now realize, was the first genuine artist I ever encountered. He could have been a first-rate movie director or novelist. He had the uncanny ability to read people and to manipulate them.

Unfortunately for me and Mr. Sullivan, Judge Barlow was a prohibitionist, a Calvinist, and a wealthy man. I had often heard his name mentioned as a figure of both fun and contempt by several clients. Thin, short and spectral with a pointed perpetually red nose, he harboured disdain for everyone with whom he came into contact. Since he embodied the idea of fussiness, nothing could ever be quite right. He always spoke crisply, often harshly, to his clerks, the lawyers, even the jurors.

A stickler for rules, he proudly reminded the assembled congregation on the first day of the trial that Hamilton was the last city in the Commonwealth to insist that women wear hats in court.
He intended to enforce that regulation. Publicly, he had often stated his agreement with the principle that women were not really full citizens under the law and were rightly not allowed to sit on juries.

Barlow took special delight in the other singularities of the Hamilton assizes. The sheriff, attired in cock hat and with sword drawn, accompanied the judge to the carved walnut dais surmounted by a royal coat of arms. Barlow seated himself in one of the chairs—the other, slightly behind him and empty, was reserved for the King. Only a man and a city completely frightened that they had no special identities could cling so desperately to such antiquated customs.

In my direction, Barlow constantly squinted, as if his eyes could not quite take in the sight of such an abominable creature. Those belligerent looks betrayed his fear that he might, at any given moment, have to correct me for bad behaviour in his courtroom. From the outset, he was determined, I am sure, that I be punished for all my wicked actions preceding and leading up to the death of John Dick.

Most of the sensational aspects of the torso murder were well known to everyone in Hamilton and southern Ontario—the story had even reached the pages of
Time
and
Newsweek
in the States. Interest was now focused on the various participants in the drama, in how they told their stories.

Anna Kammerer, John's sister-in-law, whom I had never seen before, was smartly dressed in a sombre black suit. At John's instigation, she had phoned me once to have a friendly chat. Suffering from an abscessed tooth, I had been in bed and my voice had been garbled. Judge Barlow wrote this down, as if an important piece of evidence had been presented to the court. She then mentioned that she had phoned me twice after John's disappearance. During cross-examination, Mr. Sullivan forced her to admit that my estranged husband had spent all his spare time either stalking me on Carrick Avenue or at the Henson flat. Judge Barlow obviously did not consider this a significant piece of evidence and prissily told Mr. Sullivan to refrain from this type of questioning.

The prosecution staged a potentially heartbreaking moment when Joseph Visheau of the Windsor Hotel Coffee Shop told of my husband's last meal: “He wanted only a bowl of soup which we don't allow; we only serve full-course meals. But seeing I knew John, we catered to him. He didn't wait for his check but just flopped his
money down and went off.” Obviously hoping for some sort of reconciliation with his wife, the condemned man ate hastily. A less sentimental interpretation of John's behaviour is possible: he was always oppositional, never adhering to anybody's rules.

Robert Corbett, my boarder on Carrick Avenue, told of seeing me on the evening of the sixth of March attempting to put the Packard in the garage. In backing up and going forward, I collided with the doorpost, damaging the right hand running board. He went downstairs to help—a few minutes earlier, he had noticed an appalling odour—but my mother, who was already directing traffic, insisted he take Heather back into the house as it was snowing and the child had no coat on. My neighbours—looking at me through drawn blinds or lace curtains—corroborated Robert's testimony.

Under Mr. Sullivan's expert direction, my presence in the courtroom attracted a great deal of favourable attention, particularly my dark hair expertly coifed by a fellow prisoner. The public was grateful to me. Into their dull lives I brought excitement and drama which heretofore they could only see rendered on the silver screen. Any slight alteration in my appearance was newsworthy. In one piece, the journalist observed: “Her dress: black, sleeveless, perhaps revealing her gain in weight.”

Another reporter said: “The accused is a woman possessing powerful, undeniable fascination.” Even my slightest movements became subject for table-talk. One day, I wished a journalist “good morning”. This became “as bright and crisp a good morning as the presiding justice himself might wish.” Then he asked the usual question: “Everything going all right?” What else could I say but “fine.” He wrote: “And she was off up the stairs to the second floor courtroom, moving easily between her friends and keepers, Mrs. Alice Hickmott, jail matron, and tall grey Officer Thomas Rouse.”

And then there was the time the public hangman just happened to be visiting the Barton Street Jail. When he was introduced to me in my role of a potential customer, he gleefully instructed me to keep my chin up. Then, he proceeded to tell me I need not worry about being hanged at the jail and buried there. That distinction belonged to Benjamin Parrott, the thirty-year-old man who had split open the head of his
sixty-year-old mother, Bridget. That murder had taken place many years before in broad daylight on the sidewalk in front of the family home.

Despite my weight gain, my legs were favourably compared in the press to those of Betty Grable. At Mr. Sullivan's instigation, I brought to court with me a large pad and pencil. During the laborious collection of evidence, I took notes diligently, occasionally passing a sheet of paper to my attorney. As I had seen in the movies, I would tap my teeth thoughtfully with a pencil before jotting down an observation.

Perhaps the most eagerly awaited witness was eleven-year-old Ralph Oakes, who had found John's bus driver's cap. In painstaking detail, he revealed he had come across it caught between two bushes beneath a railway bridge when he climbed down to watch a train pass. Since the cap was too big for him, the honest young man presented it to his mother who, in turn, insisted on giving it to the police. So, Ralph carefully put it in a bag, took it to school the next day for show-and-tell, and, later that day, took the bus to the nearest police station.

The surprise witness did not come as much of a shock to me. Mother had warned me she might have to allow herself to be called by the Crown. “Otherwise, my dear, they might detain me again, even put me on trial for John's death.” She said this with a snicker—as if she had told a joke, but in her voice I could hear her steely determination to avoid further incarceration. On the afternoon she was summoned to the stand by the prosecutor, Mr. Rigney, Mother chose the dreariest possible outfit: brown cloth coat, brown felt hat, and dark polka-dotted dress; she also wore a choker. By costuming herself as a country mouse, she wanted to give the impression of the vast distance that lay between herself and her city-slicker daughter. With her black handbag firmly positioned beneath her arm, she spoke slowly and deliberately. She wanted to appear a commonplace woman of absolutely no intellectual capacity—or the ability to scheme and manipulate.

The camouflage worked perfectly. When Mother entered the witness stand, I glanced up at her for a second. Then I lowered my eyes, picked up my pad and made notes. Once or twice I polished the pair of reading glasses I carried with me but hardly ever used.

My mother's testimony began with her recounting of her disapproval of my marriage, of how John eventually moved to
Carrick Avenue, where the normal married life of the couple began. Almost at once, she had been perturbed—mainly for her granddaughter's sake—by the constant quarrelling that erupted between Evelyn and John. Then, she mentioned the mysterious phone calls her son-in-law received.

“John was having lunch with Evelyn and me when the phone rang. Evelyn answered. She called John to the phone. He talked for about ten minutes. When he returned to the table, he was shaking like a leaf. He couldn't hold his knife or fork. I excused myself and went upstairs. Later, I asked Evelyn about the call. She told me Bohozuk had been on the line. He had disguised his voice, but John knew it was him. He told John he would get him.”

She then described the numerous threatening calls her son-in-law received. He began to absent himself from Carrick Avenue for two or three days at a time. On the third of February, he left for good. She spoke with him on the phone after that but never saw him again. Her final conversation with him had been on the fifth of March, the day before he vanished. Once again, he wanted to borrow money; she turned him down.

When she was asked about the events of the evening of the sixth of March, Mother told the assemblage about her annoyance at my attempt to get the Packard into the garage, “I said to her, 'You will never get that large car into this garage when it is so full of lumber, so get out of here.' She was furious with me, jumped into the car and backed it up. When she returned later that night, Evelyn was still very annoyed. I could tell by the twist of her mouth. She was starving but refused my offer of a late supper. We retired to the bed which we shared again after John's departure.”

“Two days later, Heather and I went to Sherman Avenue to watch John's bus pass by. My granddaughter was very fond of her new father, very much enjoyed waving at him. But there was no John. When I arrived home, I said to my daughter, 'John is not working. He was not on his usual car.' Evelyn looked me straight in the face, 'Well, it's not likely he would be. You won't see him again.'

“My daughter's face turned bright red. 'Nothing has happened to him?' I asked. 'He has not been killed?'”

“There was a sneer on Evelyn's face when she answered me. 'Yes, John Dick is dead and you keep your mouth shut.'”