“An indictment against whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Probably the husband,” Charity said. “It usually is in this day and age. Nobody keeps a butler any more.”
Part VI
Let the record show that all nineteen members of the grand jury are present and have been sworn and the District Attorney is ready to continue the presentation of his case.
“Mr. Foreman and ladies and gentlemen of the grand jury. During the morning session I outlined the general procedure I would follow, since this is the first homicide brought before you. In the course of the afternoon I will deal more with specifics. But first I would like to state that I am aware, as you must be, that the grand jury system has recently been criticized in the media on several grounds: the manner in which jurors are selected, the secrecy of the proceedings, the absence of any attorney to represent the defense and of a judge to rule on what is or isn’t permissible, and the fact that only twelve votes are required to issue an indictment, which allows for seven dissenters if the full jury of nineteen is present, as it is now. It is not my business to answer these criticisms. The system exists and we must operate within it. I have complete faith in your ability to reach a fair and impartial decision and I believe it will be a unanimous one.”
The District Attorney stopped to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. The courthouse air conditioning was on the blink again and the chamber, in spite of its size and high ceiling, was hot. All the windows had to be closed to shut out traffic noises. A fan droned at the back of the room, pushing the air around without cooling it.
The District Attorney’s name was Zachary Tilford and he was in his early thirties, an age considered by many to be too young for the job. He knew this and in order to counteract it he spoke in an aggressively sharp staccato voice. His words bounced off the walls like ping-pong balls.
“The house at 122 °Camino Grande is a mansion by today’s standards. Purchased about a dozen years ago by Vice-Admiral Cooper Young, USN, Retired, and his wife, Iris Van Eyck Young, it has been occupied since then by the Admiral and his wife and their two unmarried daughters, Cordelia and Juliet. A housekeeper, Mrs. Paulette Norgate, joined the household a short time later, and last year Miranda Shaw, a well-bred attractive widow, then fifty-two, was hired to act as a kind of social governess for the daughters. These five people lived in the house. During the day other employees came to assist with the cleaning and cooking and general household chores, but for purposes of this hearing we will not concern ourselves with the latter group.
“Iris Young was sixty-two and in poor health. A chronic arthritic, she had suffered two heart attacks. She lived the life of a semi-recluse, spending most of her waking hours in her sitting room on the main floor, occupied with her business interests — she was a wealthy woman — as well as her books and music. For a hobby she played chess by mail with various people around the world. This was among her activities on the afternoon of July the fourth. We know that because she gave Mrs. Shaw two letters to post, one addressed to a professor at the University of Tokyo, the other to a missionary in Jakarta. The rest of the time she spent finishing a book she’d been reading and listening to an opera. For Mrs. Young it was a typical afternoon, except for one thing. It was her last.
“Shortly after nine o’clock that night Iris Young died. Preliminary reports indicated that she was attempting to light the gas log in the fireplace when she fell forward, struck her head and lost consciousness. The escaping gas exploded and set fire to the room and everything in it, but an autopsy proved that Mrs. Young’s death was actually due to smoke inhalation. I want to bring to your attention at this point that the official temperature reading in Santa Felicia at nine o’clock on the night of July the fourth was seventy-two degrees after a daytime high of eighty-one. The temperature in Iris Young’s sitting room must have been somewhere between those two extremes, probably about seventy-six degrees, warm even for someone who was an invalid. Yet she allegedly tried to light the gas log. I call this curious circumstance number one.
“Curious circumstance number two: Mrs. Young was alone in the house. As I promised this morning, I will not waste the jury’s time and the taxpayers’ money bringing in witnesses to testify to evidence already well-documented in the investigative reports which are included in the exhibits.
“Where was her family and the other people who lived in the house? The Admiral had escorted his two daughters to a fireworks display at the Penguin Club; Miranda Shaw was out walking the dog; and the housekeeper, Mrs. Norgate, had gone to babysit her grandson. The last person to see Mrs. Young alive was Miranda Shaw. I want to bring to your attention at this point that it was Mrs. Shaw’s habit to walk the dog before she retired between ten thirty and eleven o’clock. On the night in question she left the house at eight thirty, claiming the dog suffered a digestive upset. This may be true. Certainly, neither Iris Young nor the dog is in a position to deny it.
“At any rate, our list of curious circumstances continues to grow. Number three: Miranda Shaw left the house with the dog a couple of hours earlier than usual. Number four: she was the last person to see Iris Young alive.”
The District Attorney paused again to wipe the sweat off his forehead and take a drink of water from the pitcher on the table in front of him. He was suffering from a sudden attack of nerves in addition to the heat. Although he’d reminded the grand jury — somewhat unnecessarily — that this was the first case of homicide to be brought before them, he had neglected to inform them that it was also his first. Since grand jury proceedings were always secret, and the transcripts often sealed afterward by order of a judge, he was more or less flying blind. It was small consolation that the jurors were in the same plane.
“Most of you, if you have heard at all of the crime lab in Sacramento, may think of it as a remote place where obscure research is carried on which has no connection with you personally. Well, it is no longer remote and its work no longer obscure. The lab, in fact, has moved right into your lives in the form of the document I am now holding in my hand. It contains the results of the tests made on the material taken from the scene of Iris Young’s death. This covered a wide range of things, the most important being the blood and tissue samples from Iris Young’s body. Among the items salvaged from the ruins — the wood splinters and pieces of glass and other rubble — two specific items stand out, a cane and a candlestick.
“Each of you has been furnished with a list of exhibits I will offer you in support of my case. The first is the document I’m now holding in my hand. Many people, scientists and lab technicians, contributed to it, but it’s signed by Dr. Gustave Wilhelm, acting head of the arson division. Dr. Wilhelm cannot be here to testify until later in the week, so I will take the liberty of presenting to you an outline of his report in order to answer the first of the three significant questions in this case: Was a murder committed? What were the reasons behind it? Who had these reasons? It would be illogical to proceed with the last two questions until we’ve established a definite answer to the first. Was a murder committed? Yes. This document in my hand is, in fact, the story of a murder, written in the language of science instead of literature and having as its leading character not a person but a cane.
“The cane belonged to Iris Young. According to a statement by her husband, she purchased it merely as an artifact used by an African chieftain in certain tribal rites. Later it became her constant companion. It is made of zebrawood with an ornamental head of copper and the remnants of it are on the table to your left wrapped in plastic and identified by a red tag. Even without my unwrapping it you can see that it’s been badly burned. What you can’t see is that at the head, where the copper has been hammered into the wood, there are bloodstains. The fact that any of Iris Young’s blood was found on this cane is enough to suggest foul play. Microscopic tests have made the suggestion a fact. Let me clarify.