Quiet Dell: A Novel (48 page)

“No, I cannot say that I have.” Duckworth gazed before him, sharing patient consideration with twelve hundred spectators. It was a masterful performance.

Emily glanced at a newspaper that had slipped to the floor by her feet. A legend a column wide, bordered in black, leapt out at her.

REMEMBER:

The Hundred Neediest Cases

She stared, reading the words in present context. Grimm had spoken of dozens of inquiries from relatives of missing women. How many more had inspired no search? Might Powers have killed
a hundred women? How many, then? She had to remind herself the words were a Christmas plea.

Judge Southern called for the noon recess. The hall moved and shifted; floorboards groaned overhead. Emily closed her notebook. Police took little notice of willing disappearance. If Powers picked the right victim and bade her come to him, he might leave no trail at all. He traveled constantly, and must have done so for over a decade previous to the four years he’d lived in Clarksburg. The Eichers had no money; Powers was caught because he went back to Park Ridge for radios and rugs, determined to realize a profit.

Law and Powers were nearly alone on the stage. Emily watched them, transfixed. Heads low, they conversed in earnest. She saw Powers nod, and once he smiled broadly.

•   •   •

She hurried to the telegraph office to file. Mason was already at the front of the line. Emily joined him now, resting her arm on his shoulder for a moment, and leaning down to stroke Duty’s short, alert ears.

The proprietor remembered Emily and leaned over the counter to greet them, ignoring the lengthening line. “Money can’t buy the education you’re getting, young man,” he told Mason. “You see: in the right hands, the law of the land is sufficient to redress wrong.”

Emily disagreed. She handed over her copy, a feature on the opera house typed up before the trial began. She would turn in her substantive feature this evening, including the afternoon’s revelations, building on the theme of justice as macabre performance. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and to Mason, “You look very well today. Have you had lunch?”

“Yes, in the tearoom with Mr. Malone. He sent you this.” Mason gave her a small warm parcel.

“Ah.” She followed his gaze to see William in a lobby armchair, nodding at them over his newspaper. They’d agreed he would leave the trial early to meet Mason. The parcel would be a sandwich for her lunch. “Sorry I wasn’t able to join you, Mason.”

“There’s ever so many clippings now, with the trial,” Mason said, “but we’re going to the park first.”

“Good. It’s a lovely clear day. Go along then.” William would walk with him, see him to the room, and come back to hear testimony. She watched them exit the hotel and knew she couldn’t eat, her mind was so occupied, but the sight of them was nourishment. Tonight she would have supper with Mason in their rooms, and describe a future she hoped he would accept. Early that morning, she’d met Grimm at the courthouse and signed the forms, volunteering herself as Mason’s legal guardian. It would take some time, and she could stop the process if Mason refused, but arrangements must be made.

“I’d like to know how he gets on,” Grimm had said.

She’d nodded. “I shall let you know. What would you have done, if I hadn’t taken him?”

“I’d have taken him myself, provided you left us the dog.” He’d smiled and reached to shake her hand. “Much better that he go with you, of course. Congratulations, Miss Thornhill. I believe you’ve gained a ward.” He’d accepted her heartfelt thanks.

Now she looked for Eric in the crowded telegraph office and went to stand near him. “Have this sandwich.” She put the bag in his pocket.

Reporters poured in, lighting cigars and cigarettes, joking and laughing. “Mr. Exception,” they called Law. “Do Not Recall” Duckworth was the object of new respect.

Eric was filing his feature on matrimonial agencies. “Fascinating reading, cousin. I lead with Powers’ own personal ad and finish with another just come to light. You might like to read it. Direct from ‘Cupid’s Columns,’ St. Paul, Minnesota. Date of December 30, 1927.”

Emily read:

517—Clarksburg, W. Va. Refined American lady of the highest class, desires correspondence for matrimony only. Age 44; Ht. 5–4; Wt. 110; brown hair, blue eyes, very intelligent, good cook and
housekeeper and a good businesswoman. Have a piano and considerable means. Will marry as soon as suited. Bachelor preferred from ages 44 to 52.

“Luella’s ad? But she and Powers were married in June of ’twenty-seven.”

“No. It is Eva Belle Strother’s ad. Like Luella before her, she joined numerous clubs.”

“I’m going outside to breathe,” Emily said, “and back to the opera house.”

She stepped out, shielding her eyes. The snow was bright as knives. Powers would have watched the Midwest lists, and cities distant but reachable by car. Asta Eicher had placed a single ad with a Detroit agency. Emily walked quickly; the trial would soon continue. Scores stood in line at the opera house, under the marquee and out into the street, hoping for entrance to the afternoon session.

Emily nodded to the officer in charge and stood by the marquee advertisement panels. The “N.R.A.T.” (No Room A’ Tall) signs were slid into the four large panels, and propped on a straight chair by the curb. “Sandwich men,” so called because they wore signs fixed over their shoulders, back and front, chest to knees, walked about like a perverse deck of cards emblazoned with headlines; they publicized songs, phonograph records, pamphlets about the “West Virginia Bluebeard.” Mature women in fashionable clothing, their reserved seats secure, came and went, dressed in dark colors but festooned with brooches, jet necklaces, fringed satin scarves. Perhaps they imagined themselves decked out for a show business funeral. “Isn’t he horrid looking?” said one, passing Emily. “Those blue eyes,” said another. “They say he’s a hypnotist.” A third shrugged. “He’s fairly good looking—no wonder all those women fell for him.” Emily wished for a cigarette, that she might blow smoke in their faces.

Eric was beside her. “Come in. Goff is the next witness.”

•   •   •

The painted scenery had been moved closer during the recess, as though to focus the view. It looked as if the painted trees, stirred by a sudden wind, might fall on the heads of those onstage, and ropes dangling in the wings were more obvious. Emily thought of Charles O’Boyle’s widely published letter, offering West Virginia the gift of his rope.

“Eric,” she said, “have you spoken to O’Boyle?”

“Every day. He’s reading the coverage.”

“Every day?” Emily said. “I’m glad, Eric.”

“Yes.” He looked at her, pensive, as though he too pondered bounty arisen from devastation.

Judge Southern rapped his gavel. “Court is in session.”

Morris began. “You are Dr. Leroy C. Goff?”

Goff sat upright in a fine dark suit, his shoulders squared, light reflecting off the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses.

Did he, on the twenty-eighth day of August, view the bodies of a woman and three children at the Romine undertaking establishment?

Law stood. “We object to that for the reason that we are not trying the Eicher cases.”

“Overruled.” Southern glanced at him.

“Exception!” Law sat, glaring as though insulted.

Morris persisted. “Dr. Goff, I will ask you to state . . . examination of the woman found on that occasion, and what you ascertained as to the condition of the body.”

Goff consulted his notes. “The body of the woman was badly decomposed, the odor was very offensive . . . bruises could not be identified positively . . . there was a constriction about the neck . . . the lungs were in collapse . . . no contents in the stomach, small intestines, or upper part of large bowel.”

She’d not eaten for several days before she died. Emily heard her, gasping for water in the dark.

“The hyoid bone was fractured and down to the cornu,” Goff said.

“What is the hyoid bone?” Morris asked. “The cornu?”

“It is a small bone . . . between the larynx and base of the tongue. The cornu is a horn on one end of the hyoid bone . . . there had been considerable violence exerted . . . in order to fracture this bone . . . the bruised tissues of the neck and this fractured bone led to conclusion that death was caused by strangulation.” Goff produced the handkerchief, and coughed.

At Morris’ request, Goff read from the report concerning the girls: “The first girl was sixty-two inches tall. The second girl . . . fifty-three inches tall . . . much too decomposed to determine the color of her eyes.”

Her eyes were hazel,
Emily wrote in the margin of her notes.

“Her hands were tied together behind her back with a sash weight cord . . . death caused by strangulation.” Goff looked up from his notes.

The bodies had no names.

Now they spoke of Hart.

“The skull had been crushed . . . right on top . . . two holes, like he had been hit in the head with a hammer, or some instrument of that kind.” Goff touched his head, indicating the site of the wound. “The hammer just cut out a hole . . . and the other wound, the hammer did not hit square . . . crushing through the skull.” There was general murmuring and movement in the audience. Goff paused. “There was discoloration and constriction around his neck, very marked. He had a gag . . . something stuffed in his mouth, and the cloth looped or tied around his neck, a strangle cloth . . . and fracture to the bone, hyoid bone—”

Morris questioned him: “That is the same bone you were talking about in the others?”

Goff asserted, “Yes, sir, and the injuries to his head would have caused death, but he was certainly strangled in addition.”

Someone in the gallery retched.

Emily waited, her breath shallow. They must say what Powers
had done, his violation of the boy’s body. It should be known, but she could not prove it, for it was hearsay from a confidential source. She looked up at William, in the gallery above and to her right, and saw him lean into the railing before him, as though to move toward her.

Law sprang to his feet. “I move to strike out the witness’s testimony with regard to the examination of the boy’s body just completed.” It was theater, with Law shouting, drawing attention to himself when details were most grotesque.

Judge Southern declared the motion overruled as Law shouted, “Exception!” and shook his fist in the air. Southern ignored him and leaned back to attend Morris’ question to Goff, “regarding a woman purported to be the last woman taken from the ditch at Quiet Dell.”

No, they were not going to say, for they were on to Lemke.

Eric, beside her, pressed a small vial into her hand. “Emily, take this.”

It was smelling salts. She resisted the impulse to throw the glass vial at the stage.

Goff was testifying, reading his notes. “Her hands tied behind her back with a window sash cord . . . a webbing band strap was twisted around her neck and her body tied up in feed sacks. She was dressed with stockings and dress and underclothes; her hair was, had been, long and black and done up with pins . . .”

And gone from her head, fallen from her round bald skull. Emily prompted him to say it. He did not.

“. . . an operation scar over her lower right body or abdomen, three and a half inches long . . . like a drainage tube had been in the wound. . . . The lungs were completely collapsed . . . fracture of the hyoid bone, contusion and discoloration . . .”

The redirect began, but Emily could not continue writing. She heard Law propose, “Isn’t it true that . . . collapse of the lungs follows immediately after death, in any case?”

Goff coughed. “I don’t know that it is.”

Law adopted a professorial tone. “You don’t know that it is not?”

“No, sir.” Goff answered with an air of patience.

“That’s all, Your Honor.” Law pretended to satisfaction.

Southern banged his gavel and announced court adjourned until tomorrow, December 8, at 9:00
A.M
. Emily looked numbly before her. Audience members in the orchestra section and galleries began to stand and shift, moving to the lobby.

•   •   •

She had typed her notes into a cogent account. “Here you are, sir. Special to the
Chicago Tribune
.” Emily waited as he transmitted her words. The first day of the trial was finished. Mason stood beside her.

“This is the entire transmission, Miss Thornhill?”

“Yes, thank you. Date of today, December seventh. I shall be sending more tomorrow morning.”

Mason looked up at her. “Was it terrible?”

She knew she must look exhausted, and didn’t want to worry him. “It’s going exactly as it should. All right, Mason?” He picked up the dog, for Duty was jumping at his knees; she bent down to embrace them both and usher them before her to the elevator.

Her concluding graph had to do with the lights, and stagecraft itself:
Tall scenic panels of glittering papier-mâché trees and a “backdrop” of a typical small-town street, a church at the judge’s back, set the stage for a living drama of life or death, and love.

Love, of course, was her angle, not the moral tedium concerning knaves and “love criminals.” News coverage, legitimate or yellow, constantly pressed the notion that a bad end awaited women who responded to invitation, who wished for romance and the only self-determination available to most: a respectable, financially solvent man. Woe to the buxom woman over forty who imagined sincere interest in her exhausted charms. Powers and the case itself were excuses to shame women and keep them in their places. She could not entertain the deeper questions for the
Tribune;
her dispatches must be entertaining and factually accurate, but her bias underscored every line.

Mason turned to smile at her. They ascended, ensconced in the soothing machine hum of the elevator, blessedly alone.

The crowd was on trial, to Emily’s mind, this crowd and every crowd drawn by grim spectacle, by fascination with each new detail; she was herself on trial, pointing out storybook elements in a case in which the murderer’s given name, Harm Drenth, duly matched the sobriquet of Sheriff W. B. Grimm. Grimm was looking extremely handsome, his hundred-watt smile grown brighter at each interview, on each transport of the accused from the jail to the opera house. Powers followed him, manacled, in tow between armed guards like a shambling accountant trailing a movie star.