“Bill, darling. That’s the old Blackstone speaking. Good for you, counselor. Is this for publication?”
“Not officially,” said Bill grimly. “But it might be rumored. There’s nothing Pollinger can do about it. I’ve subpœnaed her.”
“Rumored it is, Your Worship. Seein’ you, darling!” And Ella snapped her fingers and scurried off after the vanished pair.
“Bill,” said Ellery. Bill sat down, averting his eyes. “I think I know what that decision means to you.”
“Means? Why should it mean anything to me? I’m glad of it for Lucy’s sake! You people give me a pain. Means!”
“Of course you are, Bill,” said Ellery soothingly. “And so am I. For more reasons,” he added in a thoughtful voice, “than one.”
When the jury retired after Judge Menander’s charge opinion among the initiate varied. Many thought that the verdict would come swiftly for acquittal. Others predicted a long session ending in a disagreement. Only a handful envisioned conviction.
Lucy, it is true, had made a poor witness. From the first, she was nervous, jumpy, scared. While Bill led her through her testimony she was quiet enough, answering readily, even smiling faintly at times. Through his sympathetic questions she told of her life with the man she had known as Joseph Wilson, his kindness to her, their love, a detailed account of their meeting, courtship, marriage, daily life.
Gradually Bill worked her around to the period just before the crime. She related how they had discussed buying something for Bill’s birthday; how Wilson had promised to get something on Friday, the day before his death, in Wanamaker’s; how he had brought the desk-set home with him that night and she had unwrapped it and examined it; and how he had taken the gift with him on leaving Saturday morning, promising to stop off and give it to Bill that very day. She was on the stand during direct examination for a day and a half, and by the time Bill had finished with her she had explained everything and denied all of the State’s allegations. Then Pollinger sprang to the attack.
Pollinger assailed her story with consummate viciousness. The man was a human question-mark, with savage gestures and infinite variations in tonal insinuation. He sneered at her protestations of honesty. He derided her statement that she had never known or even suspected her husband’s real identity, pointing out that no jury would believe that a woman could live with a man for ten years — especially when he ‘suspiciously’ spent most of his time away from home — without coming to learn everything there was to learn about him. His cross-examination was merciless; Bill was continuously on his feet shouting objections.
At one point Pollinger snarled, “Mrs. Wilson, you had an opportunity to make a statement — a hundred statements — long before today, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t you told this story about how your fingerprints got on the paper-cutter before? Answer me!”
“I–I— no one asked me.”
“But you knew your fingerprints were on that knife, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t realize—”
“You do realize, though, don’t you, what a bad impression you are making by suddenly pulling this flimsy explanation out of your bag of tricks — after you know how dark things look for you and have had an opportunity to talk things over with your counsel?”
The whole question was stricken out at Bill’s enraged objections, but the blow had told. The jury were frowning. Lucy was wringing her hands.
“You have also testified,” snapped Pollinger, “that your husband promised to stop in at your brother’s office that Saturday morning and hand over this gift, haven’t you?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“But he didn’t, did he? The gift was found in its original wrappings in that isolated shack miles from Philadelphia, wasn’t it?”
“I — He must have forgotten. He must have—”
“Don’t you realize, Mrs. Wilson, that it’s quite obvious to everyone here that you lied about that gift? That you never did see it at your own home? That you first saw it at the shack—”
By the time Pollinger was through with her, despite all Bill could do to have accusatory questions stricken out, Lucy was completely unstrung, weeping, at times flaring into anger, and constantly — through the traps of pure language Pollinger set — contradicting her own testimony. The man was very clever about it; his ferocity was all on the surface, a calculated emotion nicely adjusted to the instability of the witness. Beneath he was as cool and relentless as a machine. It was necessary to recess until Lucy could recover from hysteria.
Bill grinned doggedly at the jury and plunged ahead with the defense. He summoned witness after witness — neighbors, friends, tradespeople — to corroborate Lucy’s claim of untroubled felicity with the dead man until the very eve of his death. All testified that there never had been a suspicion in their minds concerning Wilson’s double life, that Lucy had never evinced the slightest sign of knowledge. He called several witnesses to testify to Lucy’s unfailing habit of attending a motion picture show in town on Saturday nights when her husband was presumably away on a ‘sales trip’. He established through friends and clerks in apparel shops she patronized that she had never bought or worn a veil. Through all this Pollinger moved with calm and sure interference, quick to catch a weakness in testimony or a predisposition to bias.
Then Bill went to work on the car. He had long since pointed out, during the testimony of one of Pollinger’s witnesses — the department fingerprint expert who examined the Ford — that there was no significance in the fact that only Lucy’s fingerprints had been found in the car. It was hers, she alone had driven it for years, and it was natural that her prints should be all over it. He had also tried, with uncertain success, to have certain smudges on the wheel and gear-shift interpreted as evidences of gloved hands, but this the witness had refused to concede.
Now Bill put a succession of experts on the stand to bring out that very point — all attacked in business-like fashion by the prosecutor, either on the score of the expert’s unreliability, poor previous trial record, or outright bias. The authenticity of the tire tracks Bill left severely alone. Instead, he put on the stand an expert in metals, employed in the Federal Bureau of Standards.
This witness testified that in his opinion the Ford’s radiator-cap could not have ‘fallen off’ by the process Pollinger had claimed: a rusty area so weakened by the car’s vibration that it finally snapped through on the scene of the crime without human agency. The expert said that he had analyzed the broken halves of the radiator-cap and that nothing less than a sharp blow could have caused the little metal woman to snap off at the ankles. He went into details of strains and metal-aging. This opinion Pollinger subjected to a searching cross-examination; finally promising to produce during rebuttal an expert who would testify to an opinion precisely opposite.
And then Bill, on the fourth day of the defense, put Ellery on the stand. “Mr. Queen,” said Bill after Ellery had sketched a little of his semi-professional background, “you were on the scene of the crime before even the arrival of the police, were you not?”
“Yes.”
“You examined the scene of the crime thoroughly, out of a purely professional interest in the case?”
“Yes.”
Bill held up a small, nondescript object. “Do you remember having seen this during your examination?”