Katie Rose (32 page)

“So Mrs. Black bought the arsenic. Did she say what she intended to use it for?”

“Yes. She said she had a rat in the house that needed killing, and that she intended to take care of it.”

The jurors shuffled in their seats, and Winifred rolled her eyes. The man was obviously in the prosecution’s corner. Charles continued as murmurs rumbled in the gallery.

“Did Mrs. Black come into your establishment often?”

“Enough so I would recognize her. She bought a lot of powders for her husband. You know, medicinal mixtures like Parson’s Potion, that sort of thing. Seems he had a lot of indigestion and headaches.”

“I see. So you have no doubt as to Mrs. Black’s identity.”

“Nope. Would know her from across the street, that’s for certain. Would stay there, too, if you get my meaning.”

Horace objected, but the damage was done. The jurors looked highly unsympathetic. Desperation filled Winifred as the court recessed for a few minutes, to give Horace time to bring up the defense witnesses.

Yet even as Horace conferred with the stenographers, something was niggling in the back of Winifred’s mind. There was something about Mr. Henry’s testimony … quickly she ran through her notes. It had been simple and direct enough. But intuition told her that something here was not quite right, something that could hold real meaning if she could figure out what it was.…

“I
S THE DEFENSE READY
, counselor?”

“Yes.” Horace took center stage in the courtroom and indicated the rear chamber. A small, elegant-looking woman with silver-blue hair and a lace dress stepped through the door and walked gracefully up the aisle, as if striding through a rose garden. When she placed her hand on the Bible, it seemed almost an insult for her to have to pledge to tell the truth.

“Let me present this witness as Mrs. Cecilia Weathermere, of Fifth Avenue in New York. Mrs. Weathermere, would you mind telling the jury how long you have been wed?”

The woman turned her face toward the jury box and spoke softly. “Fifty years.”

The jurymen looked at one another in bewilderment.

“I see,” Horace continued. “Now you are a noble woman of society, well known for your wealth and charitable work. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“And would you consider your marriage a good one?”

Suddenly the woman broke her elegant deportment. “No,” she said softly. “I was forced to marry my husband because our families decreed that a match between a Chalfonte and a Weathermere would be advantageous to both.”

“I see. And was it?”

The woman looked at the jury, and her eyes flashed blue fire. “For him it was. For me, it was hell on earth. I tried everything to make it work, but Mr. Weathermere was simply a domineering bully.”

The crowds broke into a loud rumbling, while the jury stared at the society woman in astonishment. Charles rose indignantly to his feet.

“Objection! This entire testimony is irrelevant to the case.”

“Mr. Shane?”

“Your Honor, if you can let me proceed, I will soon make its relevance apparent.”

The judge gazed at Horace for a long moment, then glanced at the defendant. As if on cue, for the first time since the trial began, Monica Black lifted her veil. Her face was a little shopworn but still beautiful. She looked sadly at the judge, as if pleading. The elderly man nodded.

“Get to the point quickly. I, too, am losing patience.”

“Certainly. Thank you, Your Honor,” Horace said, then turned to the woman once again. “So Mrs. Weathermere, do you feel you can empathize with Mrs. Black’s desperation?”

“I certainly can. While I do not approve of what she did, if she did it, I can understand completely.
More than once during my fifty years, the same thought crossed my mind about the old buzzard.”

The crowd erupted into laughter, and the judge banged the gavel sharply. When the noise died, Horace continued.

“Mrs. Weathermere, you also have many friends in society. Would you describe your situation as unique?”

“Not at all,” the elderly lady said with vigor. “Unfortunately, because of our ridiculous divorce laws, I know many women who are shackled to men much worse than my husband.”

“Would you say a lot of women feel that way?”

“Objection!” Charles shouted.

“Would you say that these women, all pillars of society, support your view?”

At that, the doors swung open, and women began marching into the courtroom, one at a time. The “gray-haired battalion” as the papers would call them, paraded up the aisle, then stopped at the rail. The gallery burst into bedlam, the reporters scribbled frantically, and the judge pounded the gavel furiously.

“Counselor, what is the meaning of this?” the judge barked as ten elderly, well-to-do society women faced him calmly.

“Your Honor, these women are witnesses for Mrs. Black. They came here today of their own accord and of their own free will, to demonstrate that Monica Black’s circumstances are not unique. All of them have stood where Mrs. Black stood. All of them have been miserable in their marriages but had little voice or recourse in the matter. Once a woman is wed, she is tied to a man for life and becomes in essence his property—an antiquated concept derived from English common law that is no longer appropriate today.
What is really on trial here is not Mrs. Black but the divorce laws in society as a whole.”

“Mr. Shane”—the judge seemed about to explode—“you are turning this trial into a circus.”

“On the contrary,” Horace glanced at the saintly-looking ladies, all of whom smiled sweetly at him. “What is happening in marriages today is a circus, or rather a nightmare. Mrs. Black’s life has been exactly that. She was not trying to take her husband’s life. She was struggling to save her own.”

In the gallery, some of the women applauded, while the men roared in outrage. The reporters scrambled out the door gleefully. The judge once more banged his gavel and gave Horace a meaningful look.

“Adjournment for the day. Counselors, I want to see you both in my chambers. Ladies, you can all leave. I do not think we need to hear Mrs. Weathermere’s testimony repeated ten times.”

The crowd rose to leave, arguing over Horace’s tactics all the while. Winifred rose with them, delighted that he had made their point. But when she looked at Charles, all sense of triumph left her. He gave her a look of disgust. Then he turned swiftly to follow the judge, as if she were not worth a second glance.

Horrified, Winifred felt the people push past her, but she could not move. She had known Charles would not approve, but somehow that one look had made her feel physically ill. He obviously agreed with the judge, that their intention was to turn the trial into a circus. But if she examined her motivations, wasn’t that pretty close to the mark?

With a sickening feeling, Winifred realized that this time she had gone too far. In her desperation to help her client, she had made a mockery of the judicial system, which to Charles bordered on sacrilege. Even
as her clever mind thought up a thousand defensive rebuttals, she could not escape one clear thought—he was right.

As the crowd thinned, she walked slowly out of the courtroom. He would never forgive her this time, and she was not even sure she could blame him.

N
ever in all my years on the bench have I ever seen such foolishness! Good God, Horace, what the hell’s gotten into you?”

Judge Culvert took a sip of water, then mopped his reddened face with a handkerchief, obviously in a spitting fury. Horace sat before him, appearing contrite, his hands lifted in the air as if unable to explain himself. Charles stopped pacing the room and turned to the judge.

“I think I can explain that part. Miss Appleton has been assisting Mr. Shane in the defense. I am certain this idea was hers.”

“Is that right?” The judge turned to Shane, appalled.

“Yes,” Horace admitted, giving Charles an interested look. “Miss Appleton has been a brilliant assistant. She has thought of a lot of angles that we more experienced old geezers would have never dreamed of.”

“Shane, I have known you for a long time, and I never thought to see you taken in by a set of petticoats. Has your infatuation with Miss Appleton made you lose your mind? Whatever the intoxication
has been, I order you to put it from your head or face charges of contempt.”

Horace shrugged, then poured himself a tall glass of the judge’s water. Lifting the cup as if in a toast, he smiled pleasantly.

“Here’s to the ladies. They have finally had their day in court.” He took a sip.

“What the hell does that mean?” Charles barked, suddenly wanting to strangle Horace. The judge, too, appeared even angrier than before.

Setting his glass aside calmly, Horace gazed at the judge and Charles with that same, benevolent look he always wore. “Gentlemen, I understand why you both are upset. I know this case has caused a lot of press, some of which hasn’t been flattering to any of us. Charles, I know your feelings about this sort of thing, and Your Honor, I know you do not like to see the dignity of the courtroom mocked. Let me assure you that I agree one hundred percent.”

“You do.” The judge stared Horace down as if he were a witness. “Then why are you doing this?”

“Because the lady has a point,” Horace said smoothly. “Look, we all know what Mrs. Black tried to do. As men, we are naturally appalled by that, and as humans, we feel we have to revenge ourselves upon the perpetrator. But gentlemen, consider this. If Mrs. Black were a man, and she and the defendant had been brawling in a bar, and one almost killed the other, would we look at it the same way?”

“But that is not the same at all!” Charles retorted. “This woman had an affair with another man and premeditated her husband’s murder! It was only by luck that the man lived. Are you saying you support that?”

“No,” Horace said flatly. “What I am saying is that we have to consider what it is like for a person to be in the power of someone stronger, someone who
abuses that power. I know personally the feelings of helplessness and anger that Mrs. Black experienced every day. And I know if you live with despair long enough, eventually you do something desperate.”

“Just how did you come to this enlightened understanding?” the judge asked mockingly.

Horace was silent for a long moment before answering. “I was adopted as a child and brutalized by the man who would be my father. Like Mr. Black, he drank, and like Mr. Black, he knew where to lay his fists. The courtroom was not there for me, either, nor were the police any help. You see, a father has a right to discipline his children in any way he chooses, just as a husband has the right to chastise his wife. And when he hit my adopted mother …” His voice trailed off, and he looked as if he were seeing again the horrible world he described. After a long sigh, Horace seemed to shake off the memory. “I ran away at age fourteen and lived on the streets. I knew that if I stayed, I would kill him. So you see, I have a different view of this case.”

Something moved within Charles. Shane was always so moderate, so kind, so brilliant and amiable, no one would ever think he had such a painful past. Extending his hand to Horace, he spoke with deep emotion.

“I am terribly sorry. I had no idea—”

“Of course you didn’t. How could you?” Horace smiled, accepting the handclasp. To the judge, who looked equally horrified, he said, “I was fortunate that a certain woman of wealth saw something in me. If it weren’t for her, I would not be here today. Your Honor, Mrs. Black has the deck stacked against her. Like it or not, that is the way of our judicial system. And we men, gentlemen, have made the rules. We have the power to change them or to keep them as they are.
Because of that, I want her to have every possible chance. Miss Appleton’s tactics and my own may have been questionable, but if they have succeeded in making the jury consider, even for a moment, the system’s inequity for women and the injustice of marriage and divorce laws today, then we have been successful.”

“You do understand that the facts will win out in this case,” Judge Culvert said, his voice low. “She will lose.”

“I know,” Horace admitted. “But damn it, we have to try. If this case, the newspapers, the parlor discussions, and the silent evaluations make just one person think about this, then our effort will not have been in vain.”

“All right.” Culvert rose and put a fond hand on Horace’s back. “Shane, I have always admired the way you manage to shake things up. But let’s try to keep it under control now. I want to wrap this case up quickly, before it loses all semblance of dignity. If it’s any consolation, I too feel badly for Mrs. Black.”

C
HARLES LEFT
the judge’s chambers, deep in thought. Horace’s confession had moved him tremendously.

Dismissing his cab, he elected to walk home, wanting the relief of physical exercise to help him sort out the complexity of his feelings. How could he have been so wrong? In his refusal to see anything except that Monica Black had committed a crime, a heinous crime at that, how could he have been so blind?

He thought about Mrs. Black, trapped in a marriage and unable to escape. He tried to imagine himself in that situation, but it was nearly impossible.
Men had other means. They could travel, take a mistress, drink, carouse, all of which were socially acceptable, even encouraged. So even if he couldn’t really empathize with Mrs. Black, he could sympathize with her situation.