The Scarlet Letters (19 page)

Nikki got up. She looked ill.

“You'll have to excuse me,” she said in a faint voice.

The men rose mechanically. When the door closed, they sat down the same way.

“Proof,” said Judge Levy. “Proof!”

“I'll get to it,” Ellery promised. “Just let me work my way down the road without interruption–is that jury still out?”

“Yes, yes. Go on!”

“Once you accept the premise that the husband was behind the affair, that the wife was framed by him, with the lover his accomplice, every aspect of the case changes. If it is, no longer a genuine love affair, then Martha Lawrence did not give money to Van Harrison as other women had given it to him, out of sexual gratitude, as free gifts. She must have given him the money because she was forced to. When a woman is forced to give money to a man, whatever the man's lever may be, you can be sure the word ‘blackmail' is stamped on it. Harrison blackmailed Martha Lawrence into giving him frequent and very large sums.

“But Harrison was the tool of Dirk Lawrence. Was it Lawrence's motive, then, to use Harrison as an instrument of blackmail? Yes, but only incidentally. Because what did Dirk Lawrence eventually do? He killed Van Harrison and
he tried to kill Martha Lawrence.
If Martha should die,
Lawrence as her husband comes into her considerable fortune.
That's why I characterize the blackmail part of the plot, which Lawrence assigned to Harrison, as only incidental to Lawrence's greater plan–a plan that Harrison, of course, knew nothing about.

“It was big money Lawrence was after, and he worked out a ruthless scheme to get it. Whatever his early feelings for Martha were, he must have tired of her and come to detest his marriage. On top of this, he failed miserably to make a financial success of his writing career. So there he was, tied to a woman he didn't want but who had the money he did want. Freedom and security were Lawrence's objectives–how could he get both? And then he saw the way.”

Irons examined the tip of his cigar; it had gone out. “By attempting to murder her, Mr. Queen? If freedom and security were my client's objectives, as you say, I'd hardly recommend his method as a means of getting them.”

“Nor would I, Mr. Irons.” said Ellery, “but let's not anticipate. Your client is full of surprises. May I go on, before that jury comes in?”

And Ellery continued even more rapidly: “A year or so ago Dirk Lawrence began to evince an abnormal jealousy–it was an obsession, almost a phobia. Let's integrate it. Since nothing in this case so far has turned out what it seemed–since the deceived husband was in reality the scheming killer–we must question everything he did. Was his jealousy genuine, or was it not? The answer must be that it was not, for a man suffering from a genuine complex of jealousy would hardly conspire to entangle his wife in an affair with another man!

“The jealousy attacks were faked.

“But if we regard Lawrence's jealousy attacks as faked, then his whole plan spreads before us in all its naked ugliness.

“He would pretend to be a jealous husband, establishing himself as ridden by morbid fears of his wife's ‘infidelity.' He would carefully develop this pretense over a great many months, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and inducing an attitude of acceptance on the part of his and his wife's friends–with particular attention to Miss Porter and myself. Then he would unleash his accomplice to drag Martha into the appearance of a clandestine affair. This would be built up, by the accomplice at Lawrence's direction, with the romantic trappings of the classic adultery–a ‘code,' a book as the code-key, secret meetings all over town, with occasional ‘lapses' of discretion on the part of the ‘lover' so that they could be seen in public; and so on. Finally, the poor obsessed husband would be vindicated. He would actually overhear a telephone conversation naming an immediate rendezvous at the other man's house. He would rush out in pursuit. He would surprise his wife and the other man in the other man's bedroom … and, snatching up the other man's gun in the shock and frenzy of the ‘discovery,' he would kill them both–before witnesses, for he knew that Harrison's man was there, and he knew that Nikki Porter was a spy in his own household and that I was in the case nose-down, hot on his trail.

“Yes, Mr. Irons, your client figured out a way to commit murder for profit and live to have his profit, too. For what has your defense been? Lawrence's defense? The unwritten law, Mr. Irons–the law that's not on the statute books but has nevertheless freed every defendant who was ever able to plead it under the facts!

“You, I, Judge Levy, the State's Attorney here–and Dirk Lawrence–all know that the tradition of the unwritten law in this country and all over the Western world has been to free the wronged victim of the adultery. Juries just don't convict husbands of murder who have caught their wives in adulterous relationships with other men before witnesses–as you so rightly pointed out to this jury, Mr. Irons. Your very real confidence as to the outcome of this case–up to a few minutes ago–is eloquent testimony to that fact. It's a confidence, I'm sure, your client shares at this moment.

“Oh, yes, Dirk Lawrence was taking a chance. It was a gamble. But a very good gamble. His own father had committed the same kind of murder and had been found not guilty!–undoubtedly the source of Dirk's inspiration. The record was all in his favor, and if it was a gamble, look at the stakes he was gambling for. A fortune of millions. Many a man has run the risk of the electric chair or scaffold or gas chamber for a great deal less.”

And at this moment the court attendant knocked on Judge Levy's door, and he said, “Excuse me, Your Honor. The jury's reached a verdict. They're getting ready to come out.”

“Don't open that door again,” thundered the judge, “until I call you!”

The State's Attorney got up, sat down. He lit a cigaret nervously.

Darrell Irons got up, but he did not sit down again. He went to the window to look out at Bridgeport, the fireless cigar clenched in his teeth.

“Too late.” Ellery was saying. “Too damn late! It's a not-guilty finding, of course. They couldn't reach any other decision on the basis of the evidence presented to them. Congratulations, Mr. Irons! Once that jury gives its verdict, Lawrence can thumb his nose at the pack of us and the universe thrown in. Under the rule of double jeopardy, he'll have got away with premeditated, cold-blooded murder!”

“No,” said Irons, without turning.

“No,” said Judge Levy. “Not yet, Mr. Queen. Under the law, regardless of what the jury has decided in the jury room, there is no verdict until the presiding judge instructs the clerk of the court to ask the jury for it. This case isn't closed by a long shot. And it won't be closed until after I take my place on the bench out there.”

“But I thought–”

“Never mind what you thought, Mr. Queen. I want that proof you promised. The evidence you said would be acceptable to the court.”

Ellery inhaled. “Yes, sir! I've had only a few hours to dig, but even in that short time I was able to unearth two heretofore unproduced facts which support my theory and lift it from speculation to the realm of evidence.

“The first is legally not so important as the second, but it proves my original thesis that Martha Lawrence was not in love with Van Harrison and that her affair with Harrison was a frame-up engineered by the defendant.

“At my request, the prosecutor sent out one of the exhibits in the case to a laboratory for analysis. The exhibit, you'll recall, was the bundle of love letters found in Harrison's bedroom desk and presumed to have been written by Martha to Harrison. The analysis I requested the lab to make was an ink analysis.

“The reason I requested an ink analysis of the letters was that some odd facts had struck me. There were no envelopes to any of the letters, and none bore a date–only days of the week were named. Also, none of the salutations specifically named
Harrison;
the letters merely began, ‘My dearest,' ‘Darling,' and so on. In other words, from the letters themselves, there was no evidence that they dated from Martha's friendship with Harrison, or that they had been written to Harrison. He was presumed to have been the addressee because the letters were found on his premises.

“I phoned the laboratory just before I stepped into this room.

“Their report was that the ink on those letters is at least four, probably five, years old.

“Martha Lawrence met Van Harrison for the first time no earlier than a few months ago. This was brought out during the trial. It can undoubtedly be further corroborated.

“Therefore Mrs. Lawrence could not possibly have written those letters to Van Harrison.
How, then, did they get into the drawer of Harrison's bedroom desk? And even more important, why were they there at all? These are inescapable questions.

“Were they there for blackmail purposes? But passionate letters from a married woman to a lover have no value for blackmail purposes unless they bear dates, name names, and can be connected incontrovertibly with the individual involved. The publication of those letters as they stand would not connect them with Van Harrison–or with any other man exclusively–and any threat to publish them would therefore be an empty one.

“But if they didn't serve a blackmail purpose for Harrison, what purpose could they have served? A sentimental one? They were not even written to him.

“The more you puzzle over these letters,” said Ellery, “the clearer it becomes that the only purpose they were meant to serve was the purpose they did serve–that is, to be found, to be presumed to have been written to Harrison, to furnish additional documentation to the appearance of an ordinary illicit affair between Harrison and Martha Lawrence.

“There is confirmation of this. When I visited Harrison's house that night to warn him away from Martha, a very convenient telephone call took him out of the house for half an hour or so, leaving me on the premises alone, as I testified. On analysis, if Harrison had been conducting a genuine amour with a woman married to a jealous husband, the last thing in the world he would have done was to leave an interested party on the premises–a known investigator–giving him a clear field to search for and find such ‘damaging' evidence of the affair! Knowing I was coming, Harrison had evidently ordered Martha to phone him, so that he would have an excuse for leaving the house that would in turn allow me to find the evidence I subsequently testified to in court.

“Then where did Harrison get those letters? They could only have come from the man to whom they had been originally written. Martha Lawrence–and this can be proved in court–had only one love affair prior to her meeting with Harrison and within the past four or five years–the age of the ink–and that was with her husband. She told me herself she had written many love letters to Dirk during their courtship. If the facts can be established to the satisfaction of the Court–and I believe they can–then the conclusion is plain: The letters found in Harrison's possession came from Dirk Lawrence–
Dirk Lawrence gave them to Harrison.
The presumption must be that Lawrence did so for the express purpose that they subsequently served, since there is no other reasonable explanation. Lawrence destroyed the telltale envelopes, and he made a careful selection of those letters only in which no date appeared, no name in the salutation, and no reference in the text which would give the show away.

“The provable facts about the letters, then, with the reasonable presumptions arising from them, confirm my theory that Martha Lawrence was framed by Dirk Lawrence.

“The second thing I was able to dig out today,” Ellery went on, hardly pausing for breath, “is damning, and on its weight alone I would rest my case.

“It was brought out during the trial that Van Harrison's substantial deposits in his savings accounts coincided perfectly with Martha Lawrence's withdrawals from her accounts. But until today no one–and I don't except myself–thought of checking
Harrison's withdrawals.

“First let me expand my theory a bit. I had postulated a deal between Lawrence and Harrison, under the terms of which Harrison was to embroil Lawrence's wife in the appearance of an adulterous relationship. While the novelty of this situation must have appealed to Harrison's sardonic make-up, he would hardly have entered into such an agreement purely for the sake of its novelty. It was dangerous, illegal, and if it ever came out he would find himself behind bars. To run such a risk, Harrison could only have been tempted by the prospect of money, a great deal of money. Lawrence, then, must have offered him a considerable monetary inducement.

“Lawrence also had to offer Harrison a plausible reason to explain his own position in the deal. Harrison was no fool; and even if he were, he'd have to have been an absolute idiot not to question Lawrence's motives before agreeing to such an unusual proposal.

“What sort of motive could Lawrence have dreamed up to explain why he was doing this? The simplest possible, the one most likely to convince Harrison–in fact, Lawrence's real motive, if in abbreviated and twisted form. That is, Lawrence must have told Harrison that he, too, was in it for the money he could get out of it. He must have proved to Harrison that Martha's fortune was all in her name, he must have said that she refused to give him any substantial part of it, that he needed money desperately, and that the only way he could get any of it was to blackmail her through a third party. Harrison was to blackmail Martha Lawrence through a means which Lawrence would put in Harrison's hand, and Harrison and Lawrence would split what Harrison got out of her.

“I arrived, then, at a theoretical conclusion that Harrison had been paying some of the blackmail money he got from Martha Lawrence over to Dirk Lawrence. A kick-back. A rake-off. Could I prove it?