Meantime Marshall visited Betty daily at the women’s section of the county jail, twenty miles south of Runyon City. She continued to appear calm, but already he saw that she had lost weight and her lovely face was faintly drawn.
George Reed had found it necessary to return to his Rochester bank, but his wife had stayed on to care for Bud. Each morning Marshall phoned Audrey for a report on the boy’s welfare so that he could relay it to his mother.
Betty refused to see any reporters other than Marshall. As a result, Marshall found himself nearly mobbed by out-of-town reporters when he left the jail after his first couple of visits. But his curt refusals to answer any questions whatever about how she was taking it and what she had said soon discouraged them. Thereafter they merely regarded him silently as he came down the jail steps and climbed into his car.
He saw little of Lydia during this period, except at the newspaper office. He had lunch with her a couple of times just after the hearing, but when the story linking him with Betty broke, he decided that for Lydia’s own protection he ought to stay away from her for a while.
“They’ve already built it up from a love triangle to a rectangle,” he said bitterly. “Let’s not give them grounds for making it a pentagram.”
“But everyone in town knows we’ve been going together for two years,” she protested.
“Apparently the visiting gentlemen of the press haven’t yet run across that item,” he told her. “It won’t be long. As soon as the grand jury acts on Betty’s case, they’ll forget all these side issues and it won’t matter who sees us together. But I don’t want your name splashed from coast to coast. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
Chapter XIV
A week after the hearing Jonas Marshall called his son into his office for a conference. “We’re going to have a change of policy,” he announced abruptly.
Marshall cocked an inquiring eyebrow.
“So far in this thing we’ve stuck conservatively to factual accounts of events,” the editor of the News said. “Meantime every other newspaper in the country has been playing the case to the hilt. We’re on the inside and you have a personal relationship with everyone involved except this Thomas woman. You’re the only reporter Betty will see and you’re a personal friend of the D.A., the defense attorney and the chief of police. It’s a little ridiculous that with all this advantage, we’re letting the whole country scoop us.”
His son stared at him. “You mean you’re going to start crucifying Betty, too?”
“Of course not,” Jonas said impatiently. “Anyway, she’s already been stripped bare for the whole nation to see. It would be a little silly at this point to start rehashing everything that’s already been said, even if we practiced that yellow sort of journalism. What I have in mind may actually help her.”
“All right. I’m listening.”
“My idea is a series of articles stressing the tragic aspects of the case and tending to be sympathetic to Betty. Chief Meister, Arn Ross and Hank Quillan are so tired of reporters by now that their standard answer to everything is, ‘No comment.’ But they’ll talk to you. And all three have known Betty since she was a child. For example, your slant for the story on the chief could be that he always regarded Betty as a particularly fine woman, and it was a shattering experience for him to have to arrest her. Arn’s could follow a similar vein. With Quillan you could show his dedicated belief in her innocence and his confidence of an acquittal. It’s exactly the reverse of what everyone else has been doing to her, you see.”
Marshall was staring at his father coldly.
“Then we could cap it with an article on Betty, playing up the pathos of her situation,” Jonas went on, oblivious to his son’s expression. “Here’s a woman used to everything money can buy, whose whole world has suddenly tumbled about her. You could contrast the drab surroundings of the county jail with her big home at Rexford Bay. Describe how her usual vivaciousness had deteriorated into listless despair. You can touch on the tragic effect on young Bud, who has already lost one parent and now may lose the other. What do you think?”
“I think it stinks,” his son said.
Jonas reddened slightly. “A good news reporter can’t let personalities affect his reporting.”
“This isn’t reporting. It’s sob-sister stuff. I wouldn’t write that kind of drivel even if it was Gail Thomas in the can instead of Betty.”
“You’ll write what I tell you to!” Jonas yelled.
Marshall leaned both palms on the desk. “I’ll write news stories. By definition, news stories are reports of events, not tabloid regurgitations disguised as information. If you want to fill the paper with sob-sister feature articles, write ‘em yourself.”
Turning on his heel, he strode to the door.
“Come back here!” Jonas roared.
The reporter turned with his hand on the knob. Jonas glared at him and Marshall glared back. There was a long period of silence. Finally the older man made a dismissing gesture.
“Eventually you’ll take over this job,” he growled. “I hope the hell when you do, you have a son exactly as pigheaded as you.”
Marshall smiled at him. “I won’t be as crotchety an editor.”
He went out and closed the door behind him. Ten minutes later his father sent word to the city room that he wanted to see him again.
When the reporter entered the editor’s private office for the second time, Jonas said, “I’ve got another idea, and this one’s straight reporting.”
“What?” Marshall asked.
“Everybody in this case has been turned inside out except the victim. About all that’s been printed about Bruce Case is that he was Betty’s husband, was a local lawyer, and came here eleven years ago from Philadelphia. His origins and antecedents haven’t been touched on, because nobody knows what they are. Eventually some reporter is going to dig, though. Maybe his life before he came here was as dull as carrot pie, but maybe again there’s something in it that would make news. Do you consider that straight reporting?”
“I guess,” Marshall admitted.
“Then, for once, let’s not get scooped. I want you to run down to Philadelphia and find out everything you can about him.”
“Okay,” his son said agreeably.
Jonas looked a bit surprised. “Check the airline schedule out of Buffalo and catch the next flight.”
“I have to run down to the county jail first. Betty’s expecting me at eleven.”
“I knew it was too much to expect instant obedience just for once,” Jonas exploded. “Send a message that you can’t make it.”
“The logical place to start on Bruce is to get as much information as I can from his widow,” Marshall said reasonably. “I’m not going to rush blindly into Philadelphia with nothing but a name.”
His father subsided. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted grudgingly. “Anyway, get there as fast as you can, before some other reporter beats you to it.”
Marshall started out, paused at the door and asked, “Who’s going to mix your martinis while I’m gone?”
Jonas merely grinned at him.
Back in the city room Marshall made his usual morning phone call to Audrey Reed and learned that Bud was fine. He arrived at the county jail just at eleven.