He had telephoned to Judge Shinn, Hackett said; as soon as he hung up the phone rang and it was Prue Plummer, who had listened in on his conversation with the Judge (Miss Plummer glared from the jury “box”), to inform him that a tramp had stopped at her back door about a quarter of two, Prue Plummer had refused him food, and she had watched him slouch up Shinn Road and turn into Aunt Fanny Adams’s place and go around to the kitchen door. Hackett had then phoned Dr. Cushman in Comfort, at which point Judge Shinn and Mr. Shinn ran in...
“When you first saw the body, before the arrival of Judge Shinn and Mr. Shinn, Constable,” said Ferriss Adams, “did you notice a locket-watch hanging from a gold chain about the neck of the deceased?”
“I did.”
“In what condition was the watch?”
“The cameo on the front was smashed and the case’d sprung. Way it looked to me, one of the blows had kind of missed and scraped down the front of her, hittin’ the watch on her chest and breakin’ it.”
“Is this the watch?” Adams handed it to Hackett.
“Yep.”
“Exhibit B, your honor... What was the time shown on the face of the watch when you first saw it?”
“What it shows right now. Thirteen minutes past two.”
“It was not only broken, it was also not running?”
“Not runnin’, no. It’d stopped.”
The constable told of Ferriss Adams’s arrival and his story of having passed a tramp on the road a short time before; and of how he, Hackett, had then deputized Adams, Judge Shinn, and John Shinn to go after the tramp; and of how, a few minutes later, he followed them with a posse and they captured the tramp as he ran out of the swamp beyond Peepers Pond.
“Was that the man you captured?” asked Adams, pointing to Josef Kowalczyk. Kowalczyk’s mouth was open.
“Yep.”
“Did he surrender peaceably, Constable Hackett?”
“He put up a fight. We had our hands full.”
Hackett then told of bringing Kowalczyk back to the village, fixing up the coalbin in the church cellar as a jail, searching the prisoner and finding money hidden under his clothing...
“Constable, I show you some U.S. paper money in bills of varying denominations, totaling one hundred twenty-four dollars. Is this the money you and Hubert Hemus took from the person of the defendant when you stripped him?”
Burney Hackett took the bills, shuffled through them, put them to his nose.
“This is the same money.”
“How do you know?”
“For one thing I put it in an envelope and marked it—”
“This envelope, with the notation: Money taken from prisoner Sat’y aftn. July 5 written on it in your handwriting?”
“That’s it. There were thirteen bills — four twenties, three tens, two fives, and four ones.”
“Have you an additional reason for believing these thirteen bills are the same thirteen bills you took from the defendant?”
“Sure do. They smelled strong of cinnamon. You can still smell it on these.”
“Your honor, I enter this envelope and contents as Exhibit C, and I think we all ought to have a whiff of the bills.”
The bills were duly passed to the counsel table and from there to the jury box. Everyone sniffed. The scent of cinnamon was faint, but unmistakable.
“Now Constable Hackett,” said Ferriss Adams, “you have testified that on finding Aunt Fanny’s body, you telephoned to Judge Shinn. Did you do anything between finding the body and making the phone call?”
“I run out through the kitchen door and took a quick look around, thinkin’ I’d maybe spot somebody. At that time I didn’t know how long she’d been dead. I hadn’t yet noticed the stopped watch.”
“When you say you ‘took a quick look around,’ Constable, do you mean you stood at the kitchen door and looked, or did you actually go somewhere?”
“I run across the back yard, looked in the barn, behind the barn, in the lean-to—”
“You went into the lean-to, Constable?”
“Right through it.”
“Did you see or find anything in the lean-to?”
“Not a thing.”
“You saw no firewood of any kind?”
“Lean-to was empty,” said Burney Hackett.
“Did you see any evidence whatever behind the barn that logs had been recently split?”
“Nary a splinter.”
“Did you see any sign whatsoever, either in the lean-to or anywhere else about the premises, either during that first quick search on finding the body or at any time subsequently, of freshly split firewood?”
“No, sir.”
“Your witness, Judge Webster.”
Andrew Webster (and this time, Johnny noted, the tip of his thorny old nose was white with determination): “Constable Hackett, did you examine defendant’s clothing on the afternoon of Saturday last, July fifth?”
“Me and Hube Hemus. It was when Mr. Sheare come down with some dry duds for the prisoner and we removed his wet ones.”
“Did you find any bloodstains on defendant’s clothing?”
“Well, no, though that’s what I was lookin’ for. But they were soakin’ wet and plastered with mud and sludge from the swamp. Any blood’d got on his clothes or hands had been washed out.”
“Ignoring the totally unwarranted inference, Constable,” snapped Andy Webster, “didn’t it occur to you as an officer of the law that there is such a thing as chemical analysis of clothing, which might definitely have established the presence — or absence — of bloodstains even on wet, muddy clothing?”
“Object!”
“Overruled,” said Judge Shinn gently.
“Never occurred to me,” Burney Hackett said in a sulky tone. “Anyway, we got no facil’ties for such things—”
“There is a modern scientific laboratory in Odham regularly used by nearby Cudbury County police departments for just such purposes, is there not, Constable Hackett?”
“This isn’t proper cross—” began Ferriss Adams automatically. Then he shook his head and shut up.
“Constable, what happened to the clothing you tore from the defendant’s body?”
“Elizabeth Sheare cleaned ’em—”
“In other words, it is now impossible to establish the presence or absence of bloodstains. Constable Hackett, did you attempt to bring out any fingerprints on the murder weapon?”
Burney Hackett’s underdeveloped jaw waggled. “Fingerprints... Heck no, Judge Webster. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout fingerprints. Anyway, the poker was too messed up—”
“You did not send the poker to a qualified police or other laboratory for fingerprint examination?”
“No...”
“Have you handled the poker since Saturday, Constable?”
“Well, I did, yes. So did Hube Hemus, Mr. Adams, Orville Pangman... I guess most everybody’s handled it since Saturday.” Hackett’s large ears were now a bright, pulsing red.
Ferriss Adams’s glance appealed to Judge Shinn. But the Judge merely sat judge-like.
“One thing more, Constable. For the record, where were you at two-thirteen o’clock Saturday afternoon?”
Johnny relaxed. He had asked Andrew Webster to establish the whereabouts of every witness at the time of the murder, on any pretext, and he had begun to think the old man had forgotten.
Hackett was startled. “Me? I’d drove over to Cudbury Saturday morning for a talk with Lyman Hinchley ’bout figgerin’ out the insurance plan for Aunt Fanny Adams’s paintin’s. I got the figgers from Lyman and started on back from Cudbury—”
“What time did you leave Hinchley’s insurance office?”
“About two o’clock. The rain was just startin’ to come down. Got back home at twenty minutes of three. Parked my car — I remember I was madder’n hops at my Jimmy, he’d left his trike in the middle of my garage and I had to get out, it’s only a one-car garage, and got soakin’ wet—”