The first thing the search discovered was, of course, poor Tom. This heightened everyone's concern, because until then it was still possible to think Jennipher was simply suffering from a bump on the head—a bump I helpfully pointed out I had given her, accidentally, while carrying her from my dressing room. Her story was vague, after all, and unlikely. But Tom's body proved something had been going on.
It was impossible to revive him quickly. The first doctor to arrive confirmed that he had been drugged. When he finally did come around, he was no help at all. He remembered nothing.
It was pretty chaotic until the police arrived, which was fine with me. But they soon began imposing some order on the mess.
My story—and I was determined to stick to it—was that I'd never seen Tom lying under the heap of costumes. And why would I have looked for him there? No, I arrived back in my room to find him gone, which had surprised and disappointed me because he'd always been quite reliable. But I determined to soldier on, alone, which accounted for the delays in certain appearances onstage. They seemed to be buying it. Why would I drug my own dresser? Why put my entire performance in jeopardy?
Polly stayed at the edges of this interrogation, her face betraying nothing to the police but saying volumes to me. Sparky, you are so full of shit. I managed to send her the tiniest guilty shrug when the detectives weren't looking. She would keep quiet.
So it was decided to search the entire theater, beginning with my dressing room. In no time at all a detective was standing in front of the Pantechnicon, pointing at it.
"What's this?" she asked.
"My trunk. All actors have a trunk." For a giddy moment there I was tempted to break into a chorus of "Born in a Trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho," a song which almost summed up my life.
"You want to open it for me?"
"Of course." I went to her, positioned myself so my shadow fell over the trunk, and lifted the lid. She glanced inside, and I closed the lid.
A legitimate theater is always chock full of cubbies and hidey-holes. Temporary walls are thrown up, then become permanent, and little odd-shaped dead spaces can result. Holes are cut in stages for dramatic entrances and exits, for magic tricks. There is a labyrinth backstage, towering fly lofts, and who-knows-what in the basement. There were no sewers running beneath this theater, so far as I knew, but the Phantom of the Opera would have had no trouble hiding himself.
But with enough people the search was eventually finished, and yielded... nothing.
There were those who wanted to do it all again, but they were in the minority. After all, it was just an assault, no permanent harm done. Tom would file a lawsuit against the theater, which would be settled out of court for a nominal sum. We would all be alert for a repeat during the rest of the run, which promised to be a long one. The consensus was that the intruder had somehow entered the audience and filed out with them, even though it was demonstrated early on that this couldn't be done. Still, after you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely... is wrong, in this case. But it wasn't up to me to point that out.
Things eventually quieted down. Finally, over an hour after the final curtain, I closed my door to the last of the intruders. I pulled my beard off, went to the sink, and washed my face.
And there was a knock on the door. I sighed, and answered it. It was two more detectives. I knew, because they were holding out their badges for me to examine.
"Mr. Carson Dyle?" one of them asked.
"Yes? What can I do for you?"
"Also known as Kenneth Valentine?"
I said nothing.
"Sir, we have reason to believe you are the aforementioned Kenneth Valentine. I am placing you under arrest for the murder of your father, John Valentine. Please don't say anything until you've spoken with your attorney."
And they slapped the handcuffs on me.
"This court is now in session," said the Judge.
It was now almost forty-eight hours after my arrest. Justice can move quite swiftly in Luna, especially in a seventy-year-old case. If you don't have your act together by now, the reasoning went, you never will. We had missed one performance, but one was going on now with my understudy.
Much had happened.
I had spent the time in utter terror, feeling the walls closing in on me. I was given drugs to help combat this, but as trial time approached I had to be taken off of them, to be alert for my own defense.
I had engaged Billy Flynn, the best lawyer on the planet. I could afford him now, and it only seemed right that he have a part in what was being touted as the sixth or seventh Trial of the Century.
And what's this? you say. I could afford Billy Flynn? This, from the man who recently had to stage Punch and Judy shows for a couple of hot dogs? Who had almost starved to death riding the rods from Pluto to Oberon?
Oh, yes, I was a wealthy man. Very wealthy, for all the good it did me.
When I left Luna in such a hurry, seventy years before, Thimble Theater was an emerging player in the entertainment business. I was the majority stockholder. Upon my indictment for murder and subsequent flight, all those funds were frozen and put in the hands of a trustee. I couldn't get a dime anywhere in the system. This is a sensible law, I suppose, as it makes flight to escape prosecution very difficult. I left Luna with the change in my pocket, and a small loan from my Uncle Ed.
In my absence, the trust was required by law to manage my estate in the manner most likely to return a profit for the company, and thus for me and the other stockholders. They'd done a very good job. Thimble Theater was now the player in the entertainment business. I was one of the three or four wealthiest men alive.
And I couldn't promote the price of a candy bar.
My money would be waiting for me after I had served my sentence, if any, or been found not guilty, like any other citizen. Assuming I lived to collect it, but more about that in a moment. In the meantime I could draw only enough money for my legal expenses. Luckily, I didn't have to hire Malcolm Malpractice, the guy with the office over the barbershop. I retained Flynn and Associates, which meant I had a full combat battalion of lawyers, clerks, assistants, investigators, and researchers at my disposal.
So the first thing I did was stab Billy in the back.
"Common sense?" he shouted. "Common sense? What's all this I'm hearing about Common Sense Court? Sparky, my friend, that's for people who didn't do it! In case you've forgotten, you did it! To find guilty people not guilty we go to a jury, Sparks! Juries are what I do!"
I said I'd prefer to take my chances with the Judge.
"Let me say this to you slowly," Billy said, slowly. "The law is an ass. The law is an ass, and I am the mule skinner."
This was happening in his luxurious office, shortly after I had almost, but not quite, admitted that I had killed my father. Not even Billy Flynn was going to hear of Elwood's role in the crime, because Elwood was not going to be any element in my defense. So what I had told him was that I no longer remembered what had happened that day (true; I also hadn't remembered it accurately on that day), and that since I and my father were the only people on the stage, it must have been me who shot him. Also true.
"A jury is the best thing that ever happened to a defendant," Billy went on. "A jury is the only existing creature with no brain and twelve assholes. Do you know how you determine the intelligence of a jury? You do not add up the IQs and divide by twelve. You take the lowest IQ and divide that by twelve.
"Juries are hazardous, I won't lie to you about that. Sometimes their sheer stupidity gets in the way and they simply never understand the right thing to do. Which is whatever I tell them to do. But nine times out of ten I can whip them along to the right verdict. With the Judge, you quite often get actual justice, which is the last thing you want."