“Yes or no, please.”
“I could have had one, yes.”
“And you still refused?”
“I didn’t want one no more.”
“Your improved health, you testified, came after Duke Webster’s arrival, and in fact was due to his help. If, as you say, you no longer wanted a child, you must have had some reason not connected with health. Was this reason Duke Webster?”
She skinned back her lips, so her teeth flashed mean. She said: “Mr. Lucas, when a man treats me that way, so even you own up you warned him, do I have to run into his arms the minute I’m restored, and holler ‘oh goody goody, now I can have a baby’? Is that what I have to do?”
“The question, Mrs. Val, is whether Duke Webster was the reason for your later refusal to have a child. Please answer yes or no.”
“Quit telling me what to answer.”
“I’m not telling you what to answer, Mrs. Val. I am telling you that your failure to answer, to give me a simple yes or no, will be pointed out to the jury, to be weighed by them in its bearing on your guilt.”
She had got red when she flashed her teeth, but now little by little, as the seconds dragged on and the place was still as a tomb, she turned gray, chalky white. Then: “For the love I bore — for the love I bear — a clean, decent boy — who showed me the way — to health, hope, and God — my answer has to be — yes, yes, YES.”
She was on the floor, with the count started, but Lucas was still polite. He said: “One more thing, Mrs. Val. Webster, in his testimony, said your husband — up on the ladder this is — shot at a — at an animal. Did you become aware of such a creature, Mrs. Val?”
“I wasn’t listening to Duke.”
“No, you were engrossed with your pictures, I noticed. But let’s get back to the tank. Did you see any animal at that time?”
Only little by little, as her eyes got bigger and bigger, did she realize that this was the case against us. No matter what had gone before, about Hollis Valenty or anyone else, if I were low man on the ladder and had actually fired that shot, it all boomeranged against us. She said, half crying: “What are you talking about, Mr. Lucas? It was too dark to see that night.”
“Did you hear an animal, Mrs. Val?”
“I was in prayer, Mr. Lucas.”
“Can you name the animal for us now?”
“No. No, Mr. Lucas, no.”
“That’s all, Mrs. Val.”
Chapter XIX
Lucas, winding it up, was nice to us and more. He wasn’t called to the stand, but more or less told it all anyhow. He said: “I have no doubt that the general trend of her life was just as Mrs. Val says. Val Valenty I counted a friend, but I couldn’t rest with my conscience if I didn’t tell this jury he was exactly the kind of man he has been depicted here in this court. He was staunch, fanatical, in his loyalty to all who succumbed to his will, and it is my belief, in spite of what Mrs. Val says, that had she agreed to the child, he would have spared no expense, trouble, or care to pull her, as well as the child, safely through Once she thwarted him, however, he became hard, and every word she has repeated, of his call to me, was spoken just as she told it, and I gladly add to her story, if it helps her case at all, the warning I felt compelled to give him that he was heading into something serious — ‘one hell of a spot’ were the words I used, according to my secretary’s notes at the time — if he persisted in his intention.”
He stopped, studied his nails in a way that seemed to be habit, and went on: “I’m perfectly willing to believe in the decency of her love for Webster. I allege no impropriety. Life is replete with instances of conscience ruling the heart, and this may well have been the case here. But you are not asked to judge a moral question, to decide if a wife, driven by fear, by hate, by love, by the great wave of circumstance, has the right to kill as one way out. If that were all, the case would be simple, if dangerous, for let us admit the annals of crime are replete with instances of juries who found for the wife. You, however, are asked to pass on a question of fact: did the husband, though it was the wife who was driven, who feared, hated, and loved, who first conceived of the tank, as we know from credible evidence, as an instrument of death — did the husband, on one afternoon’s caprice, reverse the course of the wave and attempt the deed the wife had plotted against him? Did he, because of Webster’s quick intervention, fall into his own trap?
“I don’t believe it. Waves never reverse. They invented one-way traffic. If any falling was done, into a waiting trap, it was Webster who fell, and into a trap that continued to hold him long after that fateful night. I wish now to point out to you three strange aspects of this most peculiar case.”
He had raised his voice a little, but now let it drop and took a handkerchief out, a clean one, neatly folded, from his left-hand breast pocket. He crumpled it, passed it from palm to palm, and shoved it in his right-hand side pocket, where Val had kept the gun.
He went on: “First, by a disastrous mischance, Webster himself got hurt, so this pair, from that time to this, have had no chance to confer, to cook up some new tale to square with the unexpected development. Second, by a still more disastrous mischance, Mrs. Val, when left on her own, turned out a very poor liar. She had no talent at all, and told tale after tale to the police, each more incredible than the last, and none, until she took the stand just now, bearing any relation to the truth. Third, by the most disastrous mischance of all, Webster turned out a slick, cool liar, adept, by his own facetious admission, at inventing things for the police, first a tale of amnesia that served him well for a time, then a tale of acrobatics that served him a little too well.”
He tossed the handkerchief again, batting it as a cat bats a mouse, and said: “In other words, in this card game, if we exclude, as we must, my distinguished colleague Mr. Brice from any part in stacking the deck, Mrs. Val found herself — and I intend no pun — in the position of dummy. She couldn’t play until Webster finessed to her hand. Then, for a time, she played very well, following his lead closely, though not seeming to, as she mixed everything with the story of her life in a moving, convincing way. But watch the way, the almost Biblical way, she made one misplay. Toward the end, Webster hurried over the one bad part of his story. Try as he would, he could not talk down that shell, with his thumbprints on it, that he fired, as I think, to compel Val to jump, or perhaps to startle him into jumping. If, in his story, Val fired it, at what, in heaven’s name? At Webster? At Mrs. Val? How could he miss at a point-blank range? So Webster invented a cat, a cat which we are asked to believe came from nowhere and, instead of running away from a ruckus, was actually strolling toward it. But at this moment the eternal Eve in Mrs. Val tempted her to take her eye off the cards and turn it on her pictures — very pretty ones, understandably a matter of pride with her.”
He let that soak in, and then: “Now, though I would like to have questioned Webster in regard to this remarkable cat, I refrained, as it occurred to me: if this card she neglected to watch was the one she couldn’t pick out when I let her choose from the pack, it would prove beyond a doubt what I suspected about Webster’s tale. I risked the state’s whole case on this one vital point. You heard me: I offered the pack, the whole pack, and nothing but the pack to pick the card. I asked her to name the animal Val had shot at, as Webster told it here, and she couldn’t. She heard no cat. She saw no cat. There was no cat — and no scene on the ladder as Webster described that scene!”
There was more, a great deal more, but I didn’t quite hear it, on account of a ringing in my ears. Mr. Brice made a speech, a terrific speech, smacking out all that had been said against us. The judge instructed the jury, and around half past two of maybe the fifth day of the trial, it went out.