“Let’s go through the voting population of Shinn Corners and see what we get.
“The Berrys, Peter and Emily, make two.
“Hubert and Rebecca Hemus, four. The Hemus twins are only eighteen.
“Hacketts. Burney’s our bailiff-etcetera, so he can’t serve, and Joel’s under age. Selina’s so deaf the others wouldn’t let her sit even if we wanted her. Their aim is a quick trial, and Selina’s insistence on having everything repeated to her till she hears it would prolong this thing into the next century. Therefore no Hacketts.
“Pangman.” The Judge referred again to his notes. “Orville and Millie, Eddie being under age and Merritt off in the Navy somewhere.”
“Two more, making six.”
“Prue Plummer.”
“Seven.”
“Scott. Earl’s helpless — hasn’t been out of the house for five years except on his porch. Old Seth’s not only in a wheelchair, he’s senile. And Drakeley’s only seventeen. Leaving Mathilda. She’ll have to serve while Judy takes care of the invalids.”
“Mathilda Scott, eight.”
“The Sheares.” The Judge fingered his chin. “Elizabeth is our stenographer. Samuel Sheare, let us pray, will be in. Or on.”
“But you can’t do that,” protested Johnny. “A minister of the gospel serving on a jury in a first degree murder case? For one thing, Mr. Sheare probably doesn’t believe in capital punishment—”
“And in this state,” nodded the Judge, smiling, “conviction in a first degree murder case carries with it the death penalty. Exactly. And, by the way, Samuel Sheare does have conscientious scruples against capital punishment. My problem’s going to be to get him to refrain from expressing them in the courtroom. If he’ll keep quiet, we may have a fighting chance to slip him into the panel.”
“Nine,” said Johnny, shaking his head. “It’s hard to keep in mind that as far as this trial is concerned we’re on the side of lawlessness and disorder. Keep going!”
“You’ll see a lot worse before it’s over,” said the Judge. “Calvin Waters. Now Calvin’s another problem. A juryman who hasn’t been right in the head since the age of three is, of course, just in line with what we’re looking for on this jury. Trouble, is they know Calvin, too. Well, they haven’t much choice. It’s Calvin Waters, alias Laughing, or we won’t reach the sacred number twelve.
“Let’s see now... beginning to scrape bottom...”
“Wait a minute. Calvin Waters, number ten. How about that old man on the hill? Hosey Lemmon?”
“Won’t serve. Hube’s already sent Burney Hackett up to sound old Lemmon out. Hosey grabbed his shotgun, said he wouldn’t have anything to do with killings and trials, that he knew nothing about Fanny’s murder, didn’t want to know, and refused to take any part. Burn almost got his leg blown off.”
“Then who’s left? The Isbels! That’s two right there. There’s your twelve.”
“It might appear so to you,” said Judge Shinn, “which shows how tricky appearances can be. Yes, there’s Mert, and there’s Sarah, who’s twenty-nine, and that’s two, and ten plus two make twelve. Only in this case they don’t. Those two add up to one.”
“Coventry,” murmured Johnny. “I noticed Friday that Aunt Fanny’s guests steered clear of Sarah and her little girl. The others wouldn’t accept her, eh?”
“Oh, they’d accept her, especially in a thing like this,” said the Judge. “It’s Mert who wouldn’t.”
“Hér own father?”
“I didn’t tell you about Sarah. Can’t think of a better illustration of what we’re up against.” The Judge sighed. “It happened — yes, Sarah was nineteen — about ten years ago. Mert’s wife Hillie was alive then; Sarah was their only child. She was a bouncy, pretty girl, not the washed-out dishrag you see today.
“Well, it happened around Christmas time. A traveling man from New York, drygoods or notions or something, had his car break down during a blizzard, and between waiting for the county plows to come through and clear the road and his car to be fixed by Peter Berry, he was snowed in here till after New Year’s. Stayed with the Berrys, as I recall, in their spare room. At a fee, of course. With the holiday goings-on and all, Sarah was in the village a good deal that week. And when the traveling man left, she left with him.”
“Elopement?”
“That’s what we thought. Mert and Hillie were fit to be tied. Not only was the man a New Yorker, he had a furrin-sounding name — at least it wasn’t Anglo-Saxon — and, what was worse, he was an atheist, or pretended to be. Good deal of a smart aleck; I don’t doubt he was pulling the yokels’ legs. His gibes at religion made Mert Isbel froth at the mouth. And this was the man who’d run off with his only daughter.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough, about a year later Sarah came home. She hadn’t written once during that year, and when she got home we realized why. She showed up with a baby, Mary-Ann, and no husband. In fact, she hadn’t seen the man she’d run away with for months. He’d got her pregnant and abandoned her, and of course he’d never married her.”
“Dirty dog,” said Johnny pleasantly.
“Well, there are dirty dogs and dirty dogs,” said the Judge. “I give you Mert Isbel as a relative example.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hillie died. Between her daughter’s disgrace and her husband’s Biblical tantrums — and a heart that was never very strong — Hillie just gave up the ghost. And from the day Mert buried his wife, he hasn’t uttered one syllable of recognizable human speech to Sarah or the child.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Well, you’ve seen them together. Have you noticed Merton Isbel so much as glance Sarah’s way, or at Mary-Ann? They live in the same farmhouse, Sarah keeps house for him, prepares his meals, makes his bed, darns his socks, separates his cream, churns his butter, helps him with the milking and in the fields, and he pretends she has no existence whatsoever. The invisible woman, with an invisible child.”
“And Shinn Corners?” said Johnny in a clipped way.
“No, no, you’ve got the wrong picture, Johnny. The people here feel very sorry for her. Mert’s an exceptional case.
“Adultery to the Puritan,” said the Judge, “has always been a serious crime, because like murder it endangers the family and the town. But fornication was, and is, different. It’s a private misdemeanor, hurting the offender chiefly.”
“And it’s always been so common,” remarked Johnny.
“Yes, indeed. Remember, the Puritan is a practical man. He keeps the statute making fornication a crime on the books as a matter of principle, but he winks at it more often than not because he knows if he didn’t there wouldn’t be enough jail room to hold all the criminals.
“No, the stone in this furrow is Mert Isbel. We feel sorry for Sarah and Mary-Ann, but we can’t show it except when Mert isn’t around. And that’s practically never. He compounds his cruelty by making sure Sarah doesn’t get out of his sight. At church, or whenever they make a public appearance, we ignore Sarah and the little girl because if we didn’t he’d make their lives even more hellish than they are. And he’s quite capable of going on a rampage if he’s balked. Then, too, of course, they’re his daughter and granddaughter. In old Yankeeland, my boy, you don’t interfere in a family affair... Only one in town who ever gave Mert his comeuppance was Aunt Fanny. She didn’t care if Mert was around or not. She invariably singled out Sarah and the child for special attention. For some reason, Mert was afraid of old Aunt Fanny. At least, he ignored her kindness to the outcasts.
“Well, that’s the story,” said Judge Shinn, “and now you know why Sarah Isbel can’t serve on this jury. Mert simply wouldn’t have it. It would have to be either Mert or Sarah, and of the two the town obviously will pick Mert. He’s the head of a family, the taxpayer, the property owner, the deacon of the church.