“I beg pardon?”
“Let me put it another way: Isn’t it possible that in the three minutes between two-ten and two-thirteen Fanny Adams finished this painting — the last brush stroke, the initials of the signature, or whatever it was?”
“Well, naturally,” said Casavant in an annoyed tone. “There comes a moment — one might say the moment — when a painting, any painting, is definitely and finally completed. Whether that moment came before the defendant looked in, or as he looked in, or after he looked in, is not, sir, within my competence.”
“How right you are,” muttered Andy Webster; but Johnny heard him. “No, just another minute, Mr. Casavant. You have asserted that Fanny Adams painted only what she saw. Tell me, did she paint everything she saw?”
“What’s that, what’s that?”
“Well! Suppose she was painting the barn and cornfield as seen through her window. Suppose there was a pile of firewood in the lean-to within her view. Would she include the firewood in her painting?”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” said Casavant languidly. “No, she did not paint everything she saw. That would be an absurdity.”
“Then she might decide to include the firewood or she might decide not to include the firewood?”
“Exactly. Every painter must be selective. Obviously. By the simplest laws of composition. However, what she did include in a painting was at least a part of the scene she was painting.”
“But it is true that the wood might have been stacked in the lean-to, in plain sight, and still she might not have included the wood in the picture?”
“That is true.”
“That’s all, thank you!”
“Mr. Casavant!” Ferriss Adams jumped to his feet. “You say that even if the firewood was in the lean-to, Aunt Fanny might have chosen not to include it in this painting?”
“Yes.”
“But isn’t it just as true that the fact that she didn’t paint in any firewood doesn’t mean it was there?”
Casavant blinked. “Would you mind repeating that, please?”
“Well,” said Adams, “if the firewood was included in the painting, then — on the basis of your familiarity with Fanny Adams’s painting habits and so forth — you’d be positive the firewood was in the lean-to. She painted only what she actually saw, you said.”
“That is correct. If there were firewood in this painted lean-to before us, I can say without equivocation that there would have been firewood in the real lean-to.”
“But there is no firewood in this painted lean-to!” said Adams triumphantly. “That’s a fact! An absolute, undeniable fact! Isn’t it more likely, then, that since there is no firewood in the painting there was no firewood in the lean-to? And if there was no firewood in the lean-to, the defendant lied?”
“Why, that’s sophistry!” shouted Andy Webster. “That doesn’t follow at all! It’s going around in circles!”
Roger Casavant glanced helplessly at Judge Shinn. “I can only repeat, gentlemen, this painting is finished.”
The Judge looked at Andy Webster, and Andy Webster looked at the Judge, and both men looked at the jury. Their faces were a whitewashed wall, unsmudged by comprehension.
“Are you finished with the witness, gentlemen?” asked Judge Shinn.
“Yes, your honor,” said Ferriss Adams. “And as far as the People are concerned, we’re through—”
“Just a minute.”
Everyone in the room turned. It was the juror in the last seat of the second row, Juror Number Twelve. He was scribbling rapidly on the back of an envelope.
“What is it, Mr. Shinn?” asked the Judge, leaning forward.
Johnny folded the envelope. “Mind passing this to his honor, Constable?”
Burney Hackett took the folded envelope gingerly and gave it to Judge Shinn.
The Judge unfolded it.
It read: Eureka!!!! Call a recess. I think I’ve got something.
Five...
Johnny was excited. It was like playing a slot machine to kick away an hour and suddenly you hit the jackpot. You didn’t believe it, but there it was.
There was something else, too. A kind of small wriggling hope, like a newborn baby. You didn’t believe that, either, but there it was, too.
It was for laughs, because what after all did it mean? That a nobody hanging in limbo, faceless and unloved, could be cut down and restored to some reasonable imitation of life. The Judge’s “one man” notwithstanding, how important could a thing like that be? The nobody still had to face the world as it was. Cut the rope, and you only delayed the execution.
Still, Johnny was stirred. That was almost an end in itself, knowing you could be excited by something good again. It was, as the Judge would have said, progress. The first step in the miracle cure of an incurable disease.
There I go again, Johnny grinned to himself. The eternally springing hope of the human rubber ball. Well, he thought, it proves I still belong to the species.
He took Judge Shinn, Andrew Webster, and Adams, Casavant, and Peague into Fanny Adams’s studio with the easel and the painting and he told Peague to put his broad back against the door. They kept staring from Johnny to Exhibit E and back again. Behind everything was the comfortless buzz of the courtroom. There was a restless bass note in it.
“What is it, Johnny?” demanded the Judge.
“Why, simply this,” said Johnny. “The painting is all wrong.”
They turned back to the painting again, baffled.
“I assure you, Mr. Shinn,” said Roger Casavant, “you’re entirely mistaken. From every standpoint — and I speak with some claim to authority — this painting is all right.”
“Not from every standpoint, Mr. Casavant. From every esthetic standpoint, maybe. But it’s all wrong as far as this case is concerned.”
“As to that,” said Casavant exquisitely, “I am not qualified to joust with you.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Andy Webster.
“Mr. Casavant has said that Fanny Adams invariably painted only what she saw,” said Johnny. “As a matter of fact, she told me substantially the same thing Friday morning herself. The trouble is, I didn’t take her literally.”
“Can the buildup,” said Usher Peague coarsely. “Lay it on the line.”
“It’s too lovely,” grinned Johnny. “Because look. On Saturday, fifth July, Aunt Fanny was standing where I’m standing now and she was looking out this picture window and painting — Mr. Casavant says — what she saw. So let’s do the same thing. It’s the ninth of July, only four days have passed. Let’s look at the cornstalks she saw in Merton Isbel’s field there. Anything queer-looking about that corn?”
“Not to me,” said Ush Peague.
“It’s corn,” said Ferriss Adams.
“Yes, Mr. Adams,” said Johnny, “it’s corn — corn as the good Lord intended corn to look on the ninth day of July. The plants stand a little better than kneehigh; like all early July corn, they’re young and green. But now I ask you,” and Johnny suddenly pointed to the stalks in the painted cornfield on the canvas, “to observe the corn in her picture. Mr. Casavant, did Fanny Adams — who always painted exactly what she saw — see tall withered cornstalks where nature placed small green ones?”
Casavant turned a beautiful rose color. “By George,” he mumbled. “It’s autumn corn!”
“So this can’t be the painting Fanny Adams was working on when she was murdered. But if you want to argue, I can nail it down. This is a finished painting, according to Mr. Casavant. It’s a painting of the scene visible from this window, with the addition of a rainstorm. Again, if we’re to accept Mr. Casavant’s expert knowledge, Aunt Fanny wouldn’t have painted in a rainstorm unless rain were actually falling — that is, if this were the painting she was working on Saturday, she must have started it as a scene without rain, but as she was working the rain began to come down and so she painted it into her picture.