“We’ve got his half-wittedness on the record, anyway,” whispered Judge Webster.
So Adams called as his next witness Prue Plummer.
Prue Plummer was a lawyer’s nightmare; or, in Peague’s version during the noon recess, a gypsy tartar. She had dressed in her artiest skirt-and-blouse combination. The skirt was felt, with felt abstractions appliquéd on it in screaming oranges, pinks, and greens; the blouse was a handpainted, offshoulder cotton at which the other women had been glancing disapprovingly all morning; and she had put on her dangliest earrings and bound her head in a purple silk scarf to complete the illusion.
She literally ran away with Ferriss Adams’s questions. As Adams said later, it would have taken Roy Rogers on a fast horse to catch her.
“Certainly I remember Saturday’s events, Mr. Adams. Every last, bloodcurdling detail! At one forty-five there was a knock on my back door and I opened it to find a dirty, filthy man standing there, with a dark foreign skin and eyes that burned holes through me, a murderer if I ever saw one — that monster there!”
“Miss Plummer—” began Ferriss Adams.
“Objection!” howled Andy Webster simultaneously.
“Sustained!” said Judge Shinn. “Miss Plummer, you will please stick to what happened. No opinions, please.” (But he did not order the answer struck.)
“Well, he did!” rasped Prue Plummer. “I don’t care, a fact’s a fact and that’s a fact. You can tell a great deal from a human face, at least I can, not that his face is human... Yes, Judge... I mean your honor... Yes, sir... Well, he had the colossal gall to beg for something to eat and you can bet I lost no time telling him what I thought of beggars and sending him packing! I’m not feeding any stray off the roads who looks like a killer in my house when I’m alone... But he does, your honor!... Yes, your honor.
“Anyway, I followed him to my gate and watched him walk up Shinn Road and cross the intersection diagonally to the horse trough and go past the church to Aunt Fanny Adams’s house. He kind of hesitated at her gate, then he sort of looked around — furtively—”
“Objection!” roared Judge Webster for the fifth time.
“—as if he wanted to be sure no one was seeing him, and he sneaked around the side of the house toward Aunt Fanny’s kitchen door—”
“What time would that have been, Miss Plummer?” asked Adams despairingly.
“Ten minutes of two. Then I went back into my house and began locking doors and windows—”
“Why did you do that?” asked Adams, in spite of himself.
“You don’t think I’d leave my house wide open with all my valuable antiques and things in it, while a murderer was loose in the village!”
“Please,” said Andrew Webster feebly.
“And anyway I had to go to the store. I needed something for my dinner.”
“You walked over, of course, Miss Plummer.”
“Walked over? Certainly I walked over! Don’t be ridiculous, Mr. Adams. I’m no cripple. Though if I’d known it was going to rain, I would have driven over, only I couldn’t have because my car’s at ’Lias Wurley’s garage in Cudbury being overhauled, as Peter Berry can tell you himself — he saw Mr. Wurley’s mechanic drive it away.” She sniffed at Peter Berry — repayment, no doubt, thought Johnny, for Berry’s slur at the unreliability of her timepiece. “I’m supposed to leave next week for a motor trip to Cape Cod. To visit some friends, famous artists—”
“Yes, Miss Plummer. What time was it when you entered the Berry store?”
“Peter Berry told you. It was just one fifty-seven—”
Adams finally caught up with her testimony about the episode of the Berry store, although he was a little out of breath by the time he brought it down. Her story corroborated Berry’s in every detail except the time Hubert Hemus had left the store — “It was two-eighteen. By my watch, anyway!”
The balance of Prue Plummer’s testimony concerning her overhearing of Burney Hackett’s phone call at three-fifteen to Judge Shinn — “I did not eavesdrop, as alleged. It was an innocent mistake, but of course when I heard Aunt Fanny had been murdered and remembered that foul tramp over there...” — and her very busy time afterward calling Burney Hackett and broadcasting the news to everyone she could think of. She had yelled out her back door to Orville Pangman, who was out at his barn with his son Eddie and young Joel Hackett; and she had dashed over to the Hacketts’ next door to shout into Selina Hackett’s ear; but the rest had been phone calls...
Andy Webster, mercifully, made no attempt to cross-examine.
Hubert Hemus’s testimony had to be mined out of him. He answered as if every word were a precious stone to be weighed to the last grain.
It soon became apparent that he was suspicious of the kind of questions Ferriss Adams was asking, and Adams wisely shifted his tactics and left the legal improprieties to Webster’s cross-examination.
He and his twin boys, Hemus said, had been plowing and harrowing a field all morning, preparing it for a late corn planting. The harrow had broken down shortly after lunch, and he had driven into the village to see Peter Berry about ordering a new one. On his return, he and the twins worked in the barn, the rain holding up the planting. They were in the barn when Rebecca Hemus came out screaming that Prue Plummer had just called to say Aunt Fanny Adams had been murdered. Hemus had run ahead, jumping into the car and driving back to the village; Tommy, Dave, their mother, their sister had followed in the only other available vehicle, the farm truck. The three Hemus men had then joined the posse...
Andy Webster said: “About your visit to Peter Berry’s store, Mr. Hemus. Who was there when you came in?”
“Peter, Calvin, Hosey Lemmon, Prue Plummer.”
“What time did you leave the store?”
“Peter said. Two-nineteen.”
“Between the time you went in and the time you came out, Mr. Hemus, did anyone in the store leave? Step out for a few minutes, maybe?”
“No.” Hube Hemus shifted squarely in the witness chair, challenging Judge Shinn. “Your honor, I want to ask a question.”
“As a witness, Mr. Hemus—” began the Judge.
“I’m askin’ as a juror. Juror’s got a right to ask questions, ain’t he?”
“All right, Hube,” said the Judge in a friendly way, but fast.
“What I want to know is, why’s everybody bein’ asked where they were round the time of the murder? Who’s on trial here, like Em Berry asked — this furrin tramp, or Shinn Corners?”
Talk fast, Mr. Moto, thought Johnny, grinning to himself. It had been too good to last, anyway. He wondered what the Judge was going to say, feeling a hearty gratitude that it was the Judge who had to say it.
Johnny thought the Judge, who had grown the merest bit ruddy about the ears, did a remarkable job of improvisation.
“Hube, how much do you know about trials?”
Hemus kept looking at him. “Not much.”
“Think I know anything about trials?”
“Expect you do, Judge.”
“What’s the purpose of a trial, Hube?”
“Prove a man guilty.”
“How is a man proved guilty in a court of law?”