James Cain - The Magician's Wife

“State of Maryland versus Edith Conlon.”

Told to rise, Buster did so, and was informed of the charge against her: First-degree murder, in that she “did willfully and with malice aforethought, compass, contrive, and cause the death of one Alexander Gorsuch.”

Asked “How do you plead?” she let go with a hot, defiant blast, snarling: “Not guilty, that’s how I plead! ”

Her tone got a gasp of surprise from the crowd, of anger from the bailiff, who used his gavel again. “You stop banging that thing at me!” snapped Buster, advancing on him. “You asked how I plead and I told you! ‘Not guilty!’ as I’m entitled to say and expect to keep on saying!”

“The defendant will take her seat.”

Judge Warfield was quite stern, and Mr. Pender, after leading Buster to her chair, said ingratiatingly: “May it please the court?” and then asked that allowance be made “for the state of my client’s emotions: a six-week stay in jail plus the accusation she faces don’t exactly produce a tranquil spirit.”

“This court,” said Judge Warfield, “is not insensible to such considerations, but I intend to have decorum. Miss Conlon, do you hear? You will show respect for this court.”

“I have respect for this court,” said Buster, rising again. “But I’d like some respect too, and he can stop banging at me.

“The court has respect for you.”

The ghost of a smile played on Judge Warfield’s handsome face, and as Buster sat down again he proceeded to the selection of a jury. Clay listened as the talesmen were examined, trying to make himself follow, but being distracted from within by the surge of pride that he felt in this cheap, baffling girl and the courage she had shown, standing up for her rights, or what she felt were her rights. The thing went on, and by lunchtime only five jurors were chosen, four men and a woman. “You’ll notice,” said Mr. Pender, over a tray in the courthouse cafeteria, “I’m leaning heavy on men — more broad-minded, Clay. Her danger is that she’ll be convicted not of committing murder but of being — what was that word you used? — a flip-floosie. I got to remember that, it covers a lot of ground. Well, men aren’t bothered by it so much. But men-only are bad too. Couple of girls in there, of a nice, sensible kind, will head off the smoking-car jokes while the ballots are being taken. So, as of now, we’re doing all right.”

The thing went on all afternoon, and it was after five when the twelve were accepted, ten men and two women, and Judge Warfield recessed until next morning. Home with Grace, Clay told everything: his eye clash with Sally, Buster’s outbreak, the judge’s amusement, Mr. Pender’s approach to the jury, and the kind of panel they had. “O.K., I thought — they look like decent people that can take a reasonable view.” She listened, preoccupied with dinner: a fragrant martini, which she made by a formula of her own, terrapin soup, duck, baked potato, peas, salad, and ice cream. With the duck she gave him Chambertin, in all ways coddling his inner man and making him feel loved. After washing up, she put him to bed early, then climbed in with him and cuddled his head on her breast. He inhaled her with deep content, saying: “Well, make a long story short: the main thing today, from my end, was that guy John Kuhn. I have no doubt he’s tough — all prosecutors are and no use squawking on that. But toughness I don’t mind — after ten years selling meat, what does it mean to me? Not a thing — I’m used to it. It’s all in a day’s work. But at least he’s a gentleman! What I was dreading, Grace, was one of these louts. But this guy, to every one of those people, had manners. Even the roughnecks, the ones in the blue flannel shirts, he called ‘Mr.,’ and always remembered their names. Same with the women: it was ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs.,’ and invariably with respect. If he acts that way with me, it’s all that I ask. Maybe you think I’m cockeyed but—”

“I don’t at all. I know how you feel. I glory in you for it — I wouldn’t have you different. Now, if you’re all talked out, hold onto your hat. Who do you think called?”

“I bite. Who?”

“Sally. Around lunchtime.”

“Yeah? And what did she want?”

“As she said, to ask how I was and how I’d enjoyed my trip. As I think, to find out what I’ve been told.”

“And what did you say, Grace?”

“Nothing. That Mankato was simply swell.”

“Just — chitter-chatter?”

“That’s it.”

“Did she buy it, do you think?”

“With her you never know. But — she could have.”

She subsided, and he held her close for a time, but then she started again. “Clay,” she whispered, “I had to ask too. I couldn’t do less, of course.”

“You mean, how she’s been getting along.”

“Yes — and how someone else has.”

“Oh? The little boy?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well? And how has he been getting along?”

“The way she tells it is famously .” Clay started as she reproduced Sally’s voice, but she went on, “He just loves everything: the suite she has on the twentieth floor of the Chinquapin-Plaza; the new nurse she got for him, an English girl named Lizette; his kindergarten school; his pony out at the stables; his teddy bear; his sleep suit — and of course his little friends, Bunny’s kids. Clay, all the time she was talking something went through my mind. After we’ve moved, when we’re equipped to take care of a child...”

“You’d like to ask him out? Is that it?”

“I’d give anything if we could!”

“We’ll — take it under advisement.”

“Clay, he’s such a dear, sweet little boy! And until you came along he was my life. He was—”

“I thought we were going to have some of our own.”

“You bet we are! Oh, I haven’t forgotten them! ”

“O.K. — then as soon as this is over...”

“We’ll start working on them!”

She kissed him and then whispered for twenty minutes, with all an artist’s exactitude, about pregnant women, “their big bellies, the haunted look in their eyes, their craving for lollipops, for canned peaches, for everything under the sun. God’s caricatures, aren’t they? Clay, a woman big with child is the most beautiful thing in the world — and that’s what I want to be: big with child again, your child.”

“That’ll be swell, won’t it, having a child in the house that you can’t look in the eye because you killed his father. That’s one grand scheme that you can kid her out of.”

Mr. Kuhn was brief in his opening statement, a bit regretful, and devastatingly to the point. The state, he said, would prove that the defendant “killed the deceased while riding beside him, by the simple trick of jerking the wheel of his car, jumping clear when it swerved, and leaving him to plunge, by a momentum he couldn’t arrest, over a bank that collapsed under him, into eight feet of water.” Her motives, he went on, were crude, “but wholly comprehensible, if also wholly wicked.” First, she wanted revenge “on a man who had been her lover, but who on the death of his father had reconsidered his mode of life, and decided to patch up his marriage if he could. This man had a wife, as the defendant knew he had from her first meeting with him, as the wife introduced her to him.” Second she wanted cash, “twenty-five thousand dollars in insurance she stood to collect, provided his death took place before the policy lapsed — and it still had two months to run.” Then piece by piece he fitted his case together, stressing that “this was no caprice, no sudden fit of temper,” and citing an episode in the nightclub, “where the defendant nagged and urged and goaded the deceased to climb a ladder, to observe, as she told him, if overhead rails were level, but actually in the hope he would fall — and break his neck.” In a shocked, low voice, Mr. Kuhn added: “He did fall — he did not break his neck.” And then, he went on, “she took her last desperate step — intruded herself into his car and flung him down to his death.” He admitted that nobody saw this, that “our case is circumstantial.” Nevertheless, he said, “there was a witness, silent, but eloquent, in the shape of a seat belt, which was fastened, but jammed back of the seat.” But his best witness, he concluded, would be the defendant herself, who had scarcely reached the hospital “before she began making statements, copious statements, to the police — every one of which turned out false.”