The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (22 page)

“Oh, yes, they are most particular about that.”

“And you are well?” asked Mrs. Coeburn.

The girl inclined her head in indifferent assent. “Tolerable.”

“We have been to see your attorney, and he tells us that you are not permitted to speak to anyone about the circumstances of your case, because you have made an arrangement with a newspaper syndicate.”

Erma Morton hesitated, running her finger down a bar of the cell door. “My brother is seeing to all that. I just do what he tells me.”

Mrs. Coeburn’s bosom heaved with deep breaths as she marshaled her arguments. “But surely you must see how this looks to the public, my dear. Selling your story to the yellow dog press. You appear to be profiting from the misfortune of your father’s death.”

The girl looked away, but her face showed no more emotion than it had before. “I don’t know about that, ma’am. That’s Harley’s concern, not mine.”

Carl felt sorry for the girl, who didn’t look up to being brow-beaten by the Tennessee dowagers. “Trials don’t come cheap,” he said. “I think most people get all the justice they can pay for.”

Mrs. Coeburn glared at him for voicing this undemocratic sentiment, but the prisoner flashed him a grateful smile, and the merest suggestion of a nod of agreement. “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing,” she said, looking straight at him. “But I must not converse with you.”

Carl hesitated. His instincts told him that it would be ungentlemanly to press her further, but, since he was paid to be a reporter, he was obliged to try. “Could you just tell me some little thing for my newspaper? Are they feeding you well?”

She shrugged. “Try it for yourself. My meals are sent in from the diner.”

“And what are you reading?”

She glanced back at the little stack of books beside her bed. “Oh, this and that. Agatha Christie.”

Carl’s eyes widened. “A murder mystery?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she looked away. He had gone too far. But at least he had a scrap of news.
Accused Murderess Reads Mysteries.
He might be able to do something with that, but he’d feel like a hound for doing it. Why did she have to be so nice and ordinary?

Mrs. Coeburn summoned a plaster smile. “Naturally, we do not
wish to force you to say anything against your will,” she said. “We are only trying to help.”

Erma Morton nodded. “Thank you for that, ma’am.”

Carl fished a creased and slightly grubby business card out of his pocket, and passed it through the bars. “Just in case, Miss Morton,” he said. “If you want to say anything, get a message out to the world. This is where to find me.”

Behind them the deputy stood up and pushed the chair back against the wall. “If you folks are ready, I’ll show you the way out.”

As they crossed the threshold of the basement room, Carl glanced back at the cell and saw that Erma Morton was sitting in the applewood rocking chair with an open book in her lap. She did not watch them go.

By the time they reached the courthouse entrance, Mrs. Manning had discovered the names and ages of the deputy’s children, and the pair of them were engrossed in a discussion of suitable Christmas gifts for each one. Mrs. Coeburn, who stamped through the corridor as if the floor were on fire, took no part in the conversation.

Carl watched her out of the corner of his eye, and as they reached the foyer, he decided that since nothing could possibly make her any angrier than she already was, he would venture to speak to her. “I’m sorry your meeting with Miss Morton did not go as planned,” he said.

She sniffed in his general direction, and said, “I came here for the truth and I mean to get it. You have been tolerably helpful this afternoon, so you may come along if you like.”

Carl blinked. “Where are you going?”

“Why, to see the district attorney, of course. I mean to get to the bottom of this.”

Lost on a muddy road in the rainy season.

—
MATSUO BASH

Henry Jernigan barely spoke a word all evening. He stared off into space, scarcely rousing himself to respond to Rose’s conversational sallies over an indifferent dinner. He did not even bother to complain about the food.

Despite Shade’s flatlander misgivings about winding mountain roads and deep ravines, which made him drive down the mountain at a snail’s pace, they had arrived in the town of Wise just at nightfall, checking into the hotel without attempting to look at the rest of the town. Further investigation could wait for daylight.

The elegant courthouse, its light-colored stone shining in the twilight, towered over the little town like a great sand castle. The hotel, whose builder had harbored no such pretensions to Olde Worlde grandeur, was a white wooden structure more in keeping with the architectural character of the rest of the town. Only a narrow side street separated the courthouse from the inn, so that it would take them perhaps two minutes to reach the courtroom. The main entrance to the sprawling inn, a two-story portico supported by columns set under a pitched roof, sat on a brick walkway facing catty-corner to the main street. Between the front columns stood a multi-paned triangular window, nearly the width of the portico roof, situated above the second-story porch.

“I wonder if that window belongs to a guest room,” said Henry, eying the entrance speculatively. “I might like to be given that
room. And we must ask them what they’re serving tonight for dinner.”

Rose smirked. “Probably the people who checked out yesterday.”

Shade stood back in the cluster of suitcases, taking in the building with an appraising stare. Even when he was not holding his camera, he seemed to be mentally taking photos. “This place makes that hotel in Abingdon look deluxe, doesn’t it?”

“We’re in the back of beyond, Shade. We’re lucky it isn’t a three-story wigwam. Let’s just hope the radiators work. This wind feels like an ice pick.”

AFTER A HURRIED DINNER
of country ham and boiled potatoes, Henry had declined the coffee and the inevitable after-dinner conversation that would accompany it. Saying that he intended to make an early night of it, he retired to his room. He was pleased with his accommodations. By slipping a dollar to the room clerk, he had requested and received the spacious third-floor guest room that did indeed contain the big triangular window under the eaves of the portico. Its furnishings were simple and clean, if not luxurious, but the space was gracefully cavernous, and he quite liked its architectural proportions. The slanted ceiling, which followed the lines of the pitched roof, and the white plaster walls trimmed with oak reminded him of rooms he had seen in castles in France.

Add a few tapestries and Tudor furniture, he thought, and you could stage
Hamlet
in here. It would suit his mood: a hint of a ghost stirring up the madness within.

The front wall of the long room was taken up with the great window, whose many square translucent panes afforded him no view of the town beyond, but it did allow the light in, making the room spacious and airy. A low oak cabinet built in below the window
provided seating or a place to put his paperwork. The bed stood across from a brick fireplace that provided additional warmth and an air of quaint domesticity, making Henry feel oddly comforted. He had dragged the round side table and the straight chair close to the fireplace, but he had told the hotel servant that he did not want the fire to be lit. The radiator built into the window seat would provide warmth enough. There must be no flames.

He supposed that in the spirit of chivalry, he should have given this room to Rose, but he had been shaken by the incident with the little girl in Pound, and he felt entitled to whatever solace he could find. Besides, Rose always declared that the only way to succeed as a journalist was to insist on being treated like one of the boys, so he decided that this one time he would take her at her word. Besides, she had expressed a preference for a first-floor room, so that she wouldn’t have to tackle the stairs several times a day.

On the floor directly below Henry’s room was a guest parlor with doors leading out to the upstairs porch. Shade had found the lounge in his hasty reconnoitering of the premises, and at dinner they decided that it would do for their talks about the trial. If any morbidly genteel guests tried to stay there when they needed the room, they would resort to their usual gambit: telling gory and shocking tales about past news stories until the interlopers were driven away.

Henry supposed that Rose and Shade were probably there now, discussing the case and the events of the afternoon, but tonight he was in no mood for fellowship or for work. He was brooding about the strange incident in Pound. How could that little girl have known what she did? She knew nothing about his past, yet she had pointed to a little Oriental girl that only she could see, and described her so well that he knew who it was. It was obvious that the mountain child did not understand what she envisioned. She had described the kimono and
geta
as one who had never seen such apparel, and
her drawling pronunciation of
shugorei
left no doubt that she was repeating an unfamiliar word.

But he knew that word well enough. He just did not think he would ever hear it applied in any way connected to himself. Henry stared at the dark and empty fireplace, seeing flames, and remembering the first time he had heard the term
shugorei.

He was a scholar, not a tourist, Henry told himself. He was not sight-seeing in Japan for its own sake, not as an idle traveler gawking at unfamiliar sights, but in order to broaden his cultural knowledge, with a view to writing a whimsical but sophisticated volume of anecdotes about the folklore and customs of the country, and of his own experiences in observing it. He attended festivals, weddings, and funerals. He watched farmers and merchants and fishermen going about their daily tasks, and, most of all, he visited shrines. The strange and beautiful temples of the Orient fascinated him, and he visited so many of them that the earnest young college student who served as his interpreter one summer began to call him
ohenro
, which was a play on his given name, but it was particularly apt, because in Japanese the word means “pilgrimage.”

On his visits to these holy places, Henry wore the white cotton jacket of the religious pilgrim, making sure to have it stamped in red by the officials at each shrine he visited, so that eventually the plain jacket was patterned with graceful red lines of
kanji
that looked to Henry like artwork. As he made these hallowed rounds, he would talk to the
kannushi
of each
jinja
, asking about the sacred being venerated by the shrine, and from there their conversation would often flow outward to more general philosophical topics.

One afternoon on his travels in the countryside far from Tokyo, Henry and his interpreter Kenji had found a small hilltop
jinja
, set in a grove of pines overlooking the sea. A steep flight of worn stone steps led
to the entrance of the shrine, and a red
torii
gate, much smaller and simpler than those of the grander shrines he had visited, marked the entrance to its courtyard. In a tranquil garden of stones and statues and manicured plants, the dark wooden structure of the shrine itself nestled among the pines with perfect symmetry.