And that was all he knew about the old lady, said the prisoner. He had done wrong, he had stolen her money, for this he should be punished. But kill? No! He had left her alive, painting a picture in the room beyond her kitchen. He could not kill. He would not kill. He had seen too much killing in his life. Blood made him sick. He swore by the Holy Mother of God, crossing himself, that he had not touched so much as a hair of the old lady’s head. Only her money...
Judge Shinn was regarding Johnny quizzically, as if to ask, Now you’ve heard his story, how sure are you he killed Aunt Fanny?
The prisoner lay back on the cot again. He seemed indifferent. Evidently he had not expected to be believed, he had told his story only because it was required of him.
Kowalczyk closed his eyes.
Johnny stood over him, puzzled. In the course of his Intelligence and Criminal Investigation work in the Army, he had questioned many men, and long ago he had learned to detect the subtle aroma of falsehood. About this man he was not sure. By every physical and psychological sign, Josef Kowalczyk was telling the truth. But there were serious discrepancies.
Judge Shinn said nothing.
Johnny said, “Kowalczyk.”
The man opened his eyes.
“You say that the wood you split you stacked in the lean-to next to the barn. How long were the logs you split? How many feet?”
The prisoner held his hands apart.
“About three feet. They were all the same length?”
Kowalczyk nodded.
“Why do you lie, Kowalczyk?”
“I not lie!”
“But you do. There is no firewood in the lean-to, the lean-to is empty. There is no firewood in the barn, in the house, or anywhere about the house. There are no fresh chips of wood around the wood block behind the barn, such as there would have been had you split logs there as you claim. I know, Kowalczyk, because I myself have searched. Why do you lie about this?”
“I not lie! Split wood with ax, put in shed!”
“And why did you run away when we passed you on the road in the rain? Was this the act of a man who is innocent?”
“Money. Steal money...”
He had stolen money and so he had carried around his thin waist the dragging weight of guilt. But it had been guilt for having stolen, not for having killed...
They left him in the coalbin, his gray face turned once more to the sooty wall. As they stepped out of the bin Merton Isbel slammed the door and snapped the lock in the hasp. Then the farmer resumed his seat facing the door, the shotgun balanced on his knees.
“Well?” demanded the Judge as they strolled back to the Shinn house.
Johnny said: “I don’t know.”
“I’d hoped you’d form a more positive opinion than I. However, even this doubt is important. We’ve both had plenty of experience weighing the reliability of testimony. If neither of us can say this man is definitely lying or telling the truth, there may be something wrong. Something that has to be followed up.”
“The firewood story alone,” muttered Johnny, “will be enough to hang him. I mean as far as these people are concerned. Because there’s not the slightest evidence to corroborate his story. And yet — if he didn’t split any wood for Aunt Fanny, why does he insist he did?”
“It might be simply this,” said the Judge as they mounted to his porch, “that in his twisted mind a story of having worked for a meal gives him an aura of honesty not usually associated with murderers.”
“Then why does he admit to having stolen her money?”
“He could hardly deny it, since the money was found on him.”
They were both silent.
But back in his study, the Judge said, “Now you know why I want you on that absurdity of a jury, Johnny. Kowalczyk’s story brings up an interesting alternative...”
“Which is that if he’s innocent,” nodded Johnny, “somebody else is guilty.”
“Exactly.”
They stared at each other across the desk.
The Judge said slowly, “Unless we can come up with another stranger in Shinn Corners yesterday, for which there’s no evidence whatever — I’ve already sounded out everyone within reach — Fanny Adams was beaten to death by someone in this village who’d known her all his life. I use the masculine pronoun,” growled the Judge, “in its inclusive sense. It doesn’t take much strength to smash the skull of a ninety-one-year-old woman with a heavy poker.”
“In other words, you want me on that jury as a detective? My job being to detect who among your neighbors clobbered Aunt Fanny if Josef Kowalczyk didn’t?”
“Yes.”
Johnny thought of what he had had to cover with the kitchen towel in the Adams studio... He had the queerest sense of personal loss. Ten minutes of conversation in a noisy room, one touch of the dry warm hand — how could he feel that he had known this old woman from the cradle? Yet her death touched a vital, secret center in him. It left him uncomfortable. Almost emotional.
“All right, Judge,” said Johnny.
An altercation outdoors about nine o’clock that night brought them on the run. They found Burney Hackett and Orville Pangman at the intersection being tough with the ancient driver of an ancient Cadillac.
It was ex-Judge Andrew Webster of Cudbury, complete with sleepy eyes, gaunt little fine-boned face, and the trembling movements of a centenarian. Johnny had to help him out of his car.
“It’s the bones,” he said to Johnny as Judge Shinn explained his identity and status to the constable and the farmer. “Get dryer and stiffer by the year. Bones and skin. I’m beginning to look like something dug out of an Egyptian tomb. Seems to me medical science could find a cure for old age. It’s the curse of mankind... Well, well, Lewis, what have you got yourself into? Armed men! Insurrection! I can hardly wait to hear the silly details.”
Johnny drove Judge Webster’s car around to the Shinn garage. When he went into the house carrying Andy Webster’s bag, the two jurists had their heads together in the study. Johnny took the suitcase upstairs to one of the guest rooms, opened the windows, rummaged until he located the linen closet, made the bed, laid out towels. He reflected that Millie Pangman could hardly have done better.
He went back downstairs to find Ferriss Adams with Judge Shinn and Webster, looking harassed.
“Just got back from Cudbury,” Adams complained. “Had to hire Peter Berry’s car, darn him. There’s a man who would try to make a profit selling tickets to his wife’s labor pains. Had to get some fresh clothes and leave a sign on my office door — my girl’s on her vacation, of course, just when I need her most!” He had been busy all afternoon between his personal affairs in Cudbury and the more immediate matters relating to his grandaunt. He had had to ask Orville Pangman to take charge of her cow; the Jersey was now with the Pangman herd. He had also locked up the old lady’s paintings for safekeeping, pending the appointment of an executor by the county judge of probate. She had left no will despite his frequent urgings, Adams explained in answer to Judge Shinn’s question, and the settling of her estate was bound to be a long-drawn-out process. As a further safeguard, he had assumed the responsibility of authorizing Burney Hackett to write the comprehensive policy on the paintings which had led Hackett to Fanny Adams’s kitchen and the discovery of her body. He himself was going to stay at the Adams house until the emergency was over, a precaution the older lawyers approved.
They sat around for an hour discussing the conspiracy. The object, they agreed, was to go through the motions of a murder trial, giving it a sufficient appearance of legality to satisfy the Shinn Corners insurgents and wean them step by step away from their rebellious mood.