A Season in Purgatory (47 page)

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m a mess. Doesn’t it show? My sisters say it does. My sisters have become my keepers. Haven’t you noticed them? One is always on each side of me, trying to keep me from doing what I have just done, escaping from them.” She took another deep drag on her cigarette.

“Where were you headed?” I asked.

“I was going out for a drink, if you want to know the truth. I’ve found an Irish bar called O’Malley’s on the corner. Maureen thinks I’m in the ladies’ room now.”

“Wait until they find out where you are and who you’ve been stuck with,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking that.” She laughed. “I miss you,” she said in a voice so low I could hardly hear it.

“I heard you hated me,” I said.

“I do hate you, but I miss you, too. It wasn’t long enough with us. It hadn’t worn out yet.”

“No, it hadn’t.”

“Do you think about it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I hope you suffer a little.”

“I do.”

“Good,” she said. “You have become, uh …”

“What?”

“More attractive, I suppose. Almost good-looking. I never thought of you as good-looking. You were too intense.”

“What you see is relief. I’ve let go of a burden I’ve been
carrying for almost twenty years. I’m not like your brother. I couldn’t forget it. At least I couldn’t forget it once I saw him again.”

“What if he’s acquitted?”

“I will still know that I have done the right thing. That’s all that matters to me.”

There was silence again. “Have you read the letters in the
Times
?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Ninety percent of them are pro-Constant. Well, eighty percent. They believe him. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Yes, it does. It means he fooled them, that’s all. But you know the truth. And so does your whole family. He killed Winifred.”

“No, don’t start. Please.” She waved her hands in front of her face, not wanting to hear any more. “I can’t. I can’t hear it.”

“No, I won’t.”

“I don’t want to be in the courtroom on the day you take the stand and tell what happened,” she said. “I couldn’t even read through your deposition.”

“Look, we’re stuck in this elevator. It might be for a long time. We should talk about something else. How’s your mother?”

“She’s tuned out of the whole thing. She just talks about priests and nuns and dresses all the time. Mary Pat talks in French, like she’s forgotten English. I stay loaded. Only Maureen seems to be thriving.”

“There must be other things going on in the world than this trial,” I said.

“Yes, yes, there must be. Esme Bland died. Did you know that?”

I was surprised. “No, I hadn’t heard.”

“Cancer.”

“I knew she had cancer.”

“Poor Agnes. She is bereft, inconsolable.”

“Agnes is bereft over Esme?”

“Oh, yes. She says Esme was the best friend she ever had. They needed each other, you see. She left Agnes her wigs, those beautiful wigs Kenneth made her. Agnes wears them all the time now. She’s stopped being Mother Vincent.”

“Oh, Kitt,” I said.

“Sometimes I think Agnes has it made,” said Kitt. “Being ten, staying ten forever. It sounds like bliss to me.”

She looked so unbearably sad. Forgetting my resolve, I started to move toward her, but the elevator jerked. We went back up. The door opened. Maureen and Mary Pat stood there along with several maintenance men, a security guard, and a crowd of people waiting for the elevator.

“Are you all right?” asked Maureen. She looked at me with fury in her eyes.

“The elevator got stuck,” Kitt replied.

“You didn’t speak to him, did you?” asked Maureen.

“No, I didn’t,” said Kitt, in a deep, weary voice. “Not a word.”

Despite a passionate plea by Valerie Sabbath that Grace Bradley be allowed to attend the trial each day, her request was turned down by Judge Edda Consalvi. Like me, Grace was a witness, and therefore not allowed to sit in the courtroom until her time came to be on the stand. Valerie made no secret of her displeasure with the judge’s ruling. Grace’s good works for the poor of the city were well known, and Valerie felt that her daily dignified presence would offset the seamier aspects of the case in the eyes of the jury and the public. “More than any person I know, Grace Bradley understands the responsibilities of the rich for those less fortunate
than themselves,” she said on television in an irate voice after the judge’s ruling. “It is ridiculous that this woman cannot be there with her son.”

Grace, according to Fatty Malloy, who got all his information from Sis, could not bear Valerie Sabbath, despite that woman’s kind depiction of her. “She’s the most vulgar woman I’ve ever met,” said Grace, shuddering. “I’ve never heard anyone use language like that. I had to cover my ears.” The judge’s ruling was a great relief to Grace. Unlike her daughters and sons, she did not want to attend the trial. She rarely watched it on television. She didn’t read the newspaper accounts. She absented herself from the nightly strategy sessions held in the dining room after dinner. On evenings when lawyers were present, she took to having dinner on a tray in her room, often with Kitt. She was never without her rosary.

“What do you pray for, Ma?” asked Kitt.

“Oh, just the souls in purgatory, darling,” Grace replied.

“I always think of purgatory as being in jail, with all the prisoners waiting for parole,” said Kitt.

“Oh, no, no, darling. Mother Vincent would be ashamed of you if she heard you say that. Purgatory is a place for contemplation of what is ahead, for atonement for what is behind, for purification, for expiation. It is a preparation for the sight of God.”

Suddenly, without warning, Grace started to cry.

“Ma, what is the matter?” said Kitt, concerned. “I’ve never seen you cry, ever. What happened?”

“I don’t want to take the stand. I don’t want to take the stand. I don’t want to take the stand.” Her sobbing became out of control.

“But Ma, they’re only going to ask you about Mrs. Utley’s call that night. What time she called, that sort of
thing. And they’re going to ask you if Constant was in bed when you went to look for him. That’s all. There’s nothing else they can ask you.”

“I know,” said Grace, blowing her nose.

“Constant was there in bed, wasn’t he, Ma? You’ve always said he was. He was there, wasn’t he? Tell me, Ma, wasn’t he?”

“On the night in question, Mrs. Bradley, did you receive a telephone call?” asked Bert Lupino.

“Yes,” replied Grace. She spoke in a whisper, barely audible in the courtroom.

“You will have to speak up, Mrs. Bradley,” said Judge Consalvi. “It is important that both the jury and the court stenographer hear your answers.”

“Yes,” replied Grace, speaking in a louder voice. She looked straight ahead, not at the jury or at the lawyer questioning her.

“Can you remember approximately the time of that call, Mrs. Bradley?” asked Bert Lupino.

“It has been a great many years, you know. I believe it was two in the morning, or thereabout.”

“Will you tell the court who called you at two in the morning, Mrs. Bradley.”

“Mrs. Utley.”

“Mrs. Utley, the mother of Winifred Utley?”

“I know of no other Mrs. Utley,” said Grace.

“Will you tell the court the nature of Mrs. Utley’s call, Mrs. Bradley.”

“Mrs. Utley was looking for her daughter, Winifred. She had been to a dance at the club and had not returned home.”

“Was there anything else?”

“She said that my son Constant had danced with
Winifred at the club. She wanted to know if Winifred was at my house. I believe I told her she was not. She asked me if I would check to see if my son was at home.”

“Did you do that?”

“Yes. I went into Constant’s room.”

“Who was in the room, Mrs. Bradley?”

“Harrison Burns was in one bed. Constant was in the other. They were both asleep.”

“You are sure that your son Constant was in the other bed?”

“Oh, yes. I remember it distinctly. It is not the sort of thing a mother forgets.”

That night Grace Bradley did not come down to dinner. Nor did she receive any of her children who came to her room to congratulate her on her appearance on the stand. At eight o’clock the doorbell rang at the house in Scarborough Hill. Bridey, knowing in advance who it was, answered the door and escorted the young priest up the stairway to Grace’s room.

“Who was that?” asked Jerry in the dining room.

“Father Ryan,” replied Maureen. “He’s Ma’s new favorite priest.”

Valerie Sabbath’s cross-examination of me was withering, mocking, ruthless. She skirted perilously close to the allegation, propagated by Mary Pat, the Countess de Trafford, that I had once been in love with Constant, but the prosecutor called out, “May we approach the bench, Your Honor?” In a whispered session at the bench, out of earshot of jury and spectators, but recorded by the court reporter, Bert Lupino let it be known that if Valerie Sabbath proceeded with that line of questioning he would introduce into evidence my love affair with Kitt Chadwick, beginning at the
Bee and Thistle Inn in Cranston, Maine, and ending in Grace Bradley’s drawing room at the house in Southampton, when Kitt was discovered on her knees in front of me by Maureen. Bert said he would call Maureen to the stand for verification.

Valerie Sabbath asked for a recess. As it was late in the afternoon, Judge Consalvi decided to break for the day. The participants in Constant’s defense then repaired to the Bradley house in Scarborough Hill to consult on the matter.

Jerry was called. Maureen was called. Des was called. Sandro was consulted by telephone in Washington.

“If this comes out in the newspapers, that Kitt had an affair with Harrison, it will kill Ma,” said Maureen. “Kitt’s still her baby, you know. And Ma’s been acting very strange as it is.”

“Besides, it’ll blow the whole family image we’ve managed to build up here,” said Jerry. “Nobody ever told me Kitt was giving him a blowjob right in Ma’s house, for Christ’s sake.”

“How can we go into that with Father Bill sitting in the courtroom?” said Maureen. “He’s come all the way from Southampton to give support to Ma.”

The matter was dropped.

“Mr. Burns, were you a classmate of Constant Bradley at the Milford School?” asked Valerie Sabbath.

“Yes.”

“Were not your parents murdered in your fifth-form year at Milford?”

“Yes.”

“And they left no money. Is that correct?”

“They left very little money.”

“Did not Constant Bradley’s parents take you in?”

“They were kind to me.”

“Were you not a frequent visitor at the Bradley estate in Scarborough Hill?”

“I was.”

“Were you not given a room in the Bradley mansion that you used so often it became known as Harrison’s room?”

“If that is so, I was unaware of it. I remember it always being called Agnes’s room.”

“Did Mr. Bradley pay your tuition for your sixth-form, or senior, year at Milford?”

“As part of a business deal, he did. I wrote a paper for Constant that helped get him reinstated—”

“Just answer the question yes or no. Did Mr. Bradley pay your tuition for your senior year at Milford?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Burns, after graduation from Milford, did you not enjoy a year of travel on the Continent, flying in business class and staying at first-rate hotels?”

“I studied in Europe for a year, yes,” I said.

“You accepted this yearlong holiday?”

“I do not think of it as a holiday.”

“This was a gift, was it not, from Mr. Gerald Bradley to you, an orphan with no money?”

“It was not a gift. It was a payment for a service rendered.”

“You allowed yourself to be paid for, did you not?”

“I remained silent about what I knew.”

“You became used to taking money from Gerald Bradley, didn’t you? It is my understanding that your tuition at Brown University was paid by a trust set up for you by the Bradley family. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“There was, was there not, a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest? A fifty-thousand-dollar
reward offered by Mrs. Luanne Utley, the mother of Winifred Utley, whom you visited on the night of May ninth, 1990?”

“I think if you examine the facts, you will see that I did not take the reward money. It was donated to the National Victims Center, but not through me, through Mrs. Utley. I did not wish to come near that money,” I said.

The reporters in the pressroom had taken a dislike to Bert Lupino. They found him dull in the courtroom. They preferred the theatrics of Valerie Sabbath. She always gave them something to write about.

“Lupino may not be the worst prosecutor I have ever seen in a courtroom, but he’s close,” said Gus Bailey, the troublesome reporter from the Scarborough Hill
Times
, who had followed the case from the day after the murder in 1973 and was once thought to have been silenced by Gerald Bradley. “I don’t care if he was named prosecutor of the year last year. Valerie’s making Harrison look like a chump, and Lupino’s not coming to his aid.”

“He has his list of questions to ask each witness written on a lined yellow pad. He never veers from it. While the witness is answering him, his attention is focused on his pad for his next question. There is no opportunity for spontaneity,” said the reporter from the
Miami Herald
.

“Lupino has no sense of drama. He doesn’t know how to build a story,” said the reporter from the
Detroit Free Press
.

“If I were a believer in conspiracies, I would think that he is in the employ of the Bradleys,” said the reporter from the
Hartford Courant
.

“If I were writing this as a novel, that’s the way I would write it,” said Gus Bailey. “But it’s not a novel, and Bert Lupino is not in the employ of the Bradleys. I just think he’s out of his element. I think he’s intimidated by Valerie Sabbath.
Did you hear her call him Shorty in the corridor this morning? I don’t think you can put a person three years out of law school up against a million-dollar defense attorney and expect him to win. I never understand why district attorneys make the same mistake over and over again.”