“Through evidence and testimony.”
“Is all evidence the same, Hube?” Hemus frowned; as he frowned, his jaws began to grind. “No,” the Judge answered himself. “There are two kinds of evidence, direct and indirect. What evidence would prove most directly in this case that Josef Kowalczyk did in fact strike Fanny Adams on the head with that poker until she fell dead?”
Hemus thought that over. Finally he said, “Guess if somebody’d seen him do it.”
Judge Shinn beamed. “Exactly. Did you see him do it, Hube?”
“No. I was in Peter’s store...”
“How could the attorneys responsible for the proper conduct of this trial know that you were in Peter’s store at the time of the murder, Hube, and therefore didn’t see the defendant do it... unless they asked you?”
Bong! said Johnny to himself.
Hube Hemus’s jaws ground away furiously.
“How could they find out who did see him do it, if anybody did,” the Judge went on with terrible eloquence, “unless they asked everybody where they were?”
Hemus’s back drooped. “Didn’t think to see it that way, Judge. But,” he added quickly, “that’s not the only way to prove a man guilty—”
“’Course not, Hube,” said Judge Shinn indulgently. “Trial is a complicated business. All sorts of angles to it. This case may very well be decided solely on circumstantial evidence — most murder cases are. But I think you’d be the first to stand up and say, Hube, that everyone in Shinn Corners wants to do this right. So now if Judge Webster is through with his cross-examination, let’s get on with the trial, shall we?”
And Judge Webster was through. Judge Webster, in fact, was taken with a coughing fit that doubled his frail old carcass over.
“No more questions,” he spluttered, waving helplessly.
Although it was early, Judge Shinn recessed for lunch.
Court reconvened for the afternoon session with all participants under control, although through varying disciplines. The forces of law and order, who had come into the room in the well-being of danger bypassed and easy going ahead, soon glanced at one another doubtfully. The jury and the bailiff were too quiet, their never-loose mouths jammed shut.
The defendant sat down warily, watching like an animal. He had sensed the hardening at once. There was a smear of egg at one corner of his mouth, a clue to Elizabeth Sheare’s complicity.
Rebecca Hemus’s great buttocks squeezed between the rungs of the witness chair in long rolls, like sausages. She kept sucking at her teeth and moving her lower jaw from side to side in a bovine continuity. Her stare disconcerted Judge Shinn, and he kept glancing elsewhere.
That’s it, thought Johnny. They’ve talked over the Judge’s double talk and they’ve spotted it for what it was. He felt rather sorry for the Judge.
Rebecca’s testimony confirmed her husband’s. Hube and the boys had worked in the field all Saturday morning while she and Abbie were in the truck garden weeding and thinning. When the harrow broke down and Hube left for Peter Berry’s, the twins came over and cultivated in the rows till the rain began. They all ran back to the house and the boys fixed a separator that needed doing. When Hube got back he and the twins went out to the barn. Then about twenty or twenty-five minutes past three Prue Plummer phoned the terrible news, Hube got into the car, she and Abbie and the boys got into the truck...
“In other words, Mrs. Hemus,” said Adams, “at two-thirteen Saturday afternoon you, your daughter, and Tommy and Dave were in your house within sight of one another?”
“We were,” said Rebecca Hemus accusingly.
Andrew Webster waived cross-examination, and Mrs. Hemus was excused.
“I recall to the stand,” said Adams, “Reverend Samuel Sheare.”
The minister was poorly today. His movements were slow and his bloodshot eyes suggested that there had been little rest for the spirit. He took his seat with the stiffness of a man who has been too long on his knees.
Adams came to the point at once: “Mr. Sheare, where exactly were you at two-thirteen Saturday afternoon?”
“I was in the parsonage.”
“Alone?”
“Mrs. Sheare was with me.”
“In the same room, Mr. Sheare?”
“Yes. I was workin’ on my sermon for Sunday. I began directly after lunch, which was at noon, and I was still hard at it when the fire siren went off. Mrs. Sheare and I were never out of sight of each other.”
Adams was embarrassed. “Of course, Mr. Sheare. Er... you didn’t happen to see anyone pass the north corner — let’s say from a window of the parsonage overlooking Shinn Road — between a quarter to two and a quarter after?”
“We were in my study, Mr. Adams. My study is at the opposite side of the parsonage, facin’ the cemetery.”
“Judge Webster?”
“No questions.”
“You may stand down, Mr. Sheare,” said Judge Shinn.
But Mr. Sheare sat there. He was looking at Josef Kowalczyk, and Josef Kowalczyk was looking back at him with the unclouded trust of a mortally injured dog.
“Mr. Sheare?” said the Judge again.
The minister started. “Pa’don. I know this is probably out of order, Judge Shinn, but may I take this opportunity to make a request of the court?”
“Yes?”
“When I took Josef the lunch tray my wife prepared for him today, he asked me to do somethin’ for him. I should very much like to do it. But I realize that under the circumstances it’s necessary to get permission.”
Andrew Webster shot a glance at the prisoner. But the man had eyes only for Samuel Sheare.
“What is it the defendant wants, Mr. Sheare?”
“His faith forbids him to accept spiritual consolation from a clergyman not of his church. He would like to see a priest. I ask permission to call Father Girard of the Church of the Holy Ascension in Cudbury.”
Judge Shinn was silent.
“He’s very much in need, Judge,” said Mr. Sheare urgently. “We must realize that he’s goin’ through tremendous anxiety not only because of his predicament but also ’cause he’s bein’ held in a Protestant church. Surely—”
“Mr. Sheare.” The Judge leaned forward in a sort of colic. “This is a request which shouldn’t even have to be made. But you know the peculiar... restrictions of our circumstances here. To bring in an outsider now, even a man of the cloth, might give rise to complications we simply couldn’t cope with. I’m dreadfully sorry. In a few days, yes. But not now, Mr. Sheare. Do you think you can make the defendant understand?”
“I doubt it.”
Samuel Sheare gathered himself and went back to his chair, where he folded his hands and closed his eyes.
“Elizabeth Sheare,” said Ferriss Adams.
Then followed the spectacle of the court stenographer exchanging her notebook for the witness chair, and the ancient defense attorney, who claimed to have perfected a shorthand system of his own almost two generations before, temporarily taking over her duties.
Her tenure was short. The stout wife of the pastor testified in a soft and troubled voice, seeking the eyes of her husband frequently — they opened as soon as she took the stand — and answering without hesitation.
Yes, she had joined her husband in his study immediately after doing the lunch dishes Saturday. No, she had not helped him with his sermon; Mr. Sheare always prepared his sermons unaided. She had planned to go to Cudbury with Emily Berry and the Berry children to do some shopping—
“Oh, you don’t have a car, Mrs. Sheare?”
She flushed. “Well, we don’t really need one, Mr. Adams. This is a very small parish, and when Mr. Sheare goes parish-calling he walks...”
But she had changed her mind about going to Cudbury; Johnny gathered that some stern Congregational discipline had had to be exercised. The school year had ended on Friday, June the twenty-seventh, and in the week before Independence Day she had been busy cleaning up the schoolroom, taking inventory of school property, putting textbooks and supplies away, filing students’ records, and the like; on Thursday, the day before the holiday, she had finished and locked the school for the summer. But she had one further duty to perform, and it was this that had dissuaded her from going into Cudbury with Emily Berry on Saturday. She spent the afternoon at work beside her husband preparing her annual report to the school board, summarizing the year just ended, attendance records, a financial statement, the probable enrollment for the fall term, and so on. Yes, they had worked steadily without leaving the house until the alarm sent them rushing outdoors to learn of Aunt Fanny Adams’s shocking death.