Double Jeopardy (11 page)

This opened my eyes. Please believe that up until that time I had never had any encounters with the police, having always been careful not to violate any of the ordinances with the possible exception of Prohibition. “What have I done, Captain? Murdered someone?” I asked.

He laughed good-humoredly. “No. But you should have, while you were at it. It's that Mackintosh kid. His old man swore out a warrant for your arrest on a charge of assaulting his brat. I don't know if it's true or not, but by God I'd like to assault him myself sometimes.”

“But look here, Captain,” I protested. “I only...”

“I know it's a damned nuisance. But orders, you know. The judge is a pretty decent sort and he'll probably give you a medal. Better get your hat.”

I shrugged my shoulders helplessly and told the constable to make himself comfortable on the porch while I got myself ready. Since I was so late for work anyhow, a little longer would make no difference. I was positive, that when I made it clear to whomever was going to hear the case exactly why I spanked Jackie, everything would be all right.

As I turned to go inside, I felt Richter touch my sleeve. “Good Lord, Thatcher! What did you do? Cut yourself?”

“Why no,” I answered, puzzled. “What makes you say that?”

He pointed a finger at my trousers and, looking down at them, I saw that they were stained with red! I stood there dumbfounded with my mouth hanging open.

“That's blood all right,” I heard the policeman mutter. “Yes, sir. That's blood. But where in hell did it come from?”

Instantly I thought of the night just past. My mind was quick to grasp the situation and it evoked a vivid picture of Anita, standing with the carving-knife in her hand and threatening....

“Anita!” I shouted hoarsely and with my heart in my mouth I ran into the house. I could hear Richter behind me, his ponderous weight making the old floor-boards vibrate under my feet.

I saw then that the living-room was a shambles. A table was overturned, two lamps lay shattered on the carpet and everywhere were reddish smears that looked suspiciously like bloodstains. In the kitchen we found still more blood and a bloody apron of Anita's lying on the table, still set with the dirty dinner dishes. On the apron we found the carving-knife... its blade a mess of crusted blood!

In the face of all this horror, it is a wonder I didn't faint. However, even so, it is impossible for me to describe my feelings of that morning. Of course I was certain at once that Anita had committed suicide, had severed her veins or something equally terrible. But on racing through the rooms of the house, we could find no trace of her. Only some clothes and the two teeth she had tossed onto the table during dinner the night before spoke of her ever having been there.

My frantic fear for Anita temporarily dulled my wits so that it was not until the constable and I had picked about in the dark cellar for some time that I remembered seeing Anita last sitting in the garden. I seized the policeman's arm and all but pulled him up the stairs, through the back hall and outside.

But Anita was nowhere to be found. We searched the grounds thoroughly. The camp-chair, where last I had seen her, was empty, the canvas back of it still sagging from the weight of her shoulders. But, to our horror, from the back porch to the very edge of the lake ran a dark, repulsive trail of what was undoubtedly blood! In places there were merely a few drops on the taller tufts of grass, hardly visible to the eye; but mostly the awful trail ran wide....

“She's thrown herself in!” I gasped. “My God, Captain! What can we do?”

I burst into tears, something I hadn't done for many, many years. The constable waited in silence for me to control myself. He didn't try to comfort me.

“Oh, Anita!” I cried. “Why did you do it? Oh, why did you do it?”

Richter spit into the lake. “That's what I'd like to know, Thatcher,” he said curtly. He was looking at me closely, his brows knit into a frown.

“Why, what do you mean, Richter?” I asked.

“Oh, cut out that innocent stuff!” he growled disgustedly. “You know damned well what I mean.”

I assured him that I did not. He surely wasn't insinuating that I... Why the idea was absurd! Nevertheless, absurd or not, I saw the constable's face stubbornly set.

“You don't believe that she committed suicide?” I asked in confusion. “Is it possible that she's still alive?” I stepped toward him and seized the front of his uniform blouse. “Tell me what you're thinking!” I demanded hysterically.

“Alive hell!” was his comment and I suddenly felt my wrist encircled by a steel cuff which clicked shut and pinched my skin. “I don't know where you've hidden her, Thatcher, but she didn't commit no suicide!”

“No?”

“No. You better get yourself an alibi. How did you get that blood on your pants?”

“I don't know!”

“Well for your own good you'd better find out.”

“But Anita....”

“Oh, we'll fish her out all right. But not now.” Richter tugged at the bracelets. “I ain't got my water-wings with me. Come on,” he added out of the corner of his mouth as he led me away from the lake shore.

I went along with him dazedly. There was nothing else I could do.

My trial was held in the Tompkins County Court house in Ithaca. The State was represented by an obnoxious little Assistant District Attorney who, nevertheless, I am forced to admit, handled his side of the case magnificently. Point by point he scored tellingly until he had almost convinced even me that I had done away with Anita.

For the terrible part of it all was that I couldn't be quite sure whether I had or not. As Assistant District Attorney Blackman pointed out, I could very easily have committed the crime during one of my unfortunate lapses of memory. True, this souvenir of the war had not recurred since I was discharged from the hospital months before, but there was no evidence to prove that it
couldn't
recur.

So when old Doc Turnbull, who visited me in my cell before the trial, remarked kindly that he was sure I hadn't done it, I replied in despair: “But that's just it! How can you say I didn't kill her when I don't even know myself?”

Unless my periodic amnesia was coupled with an unreasonable dementia, there was no motive for my killing Anita—;as far as I was concerned. Gilberte's letter which I never read and which the State offered in evidence, had had nothing to do with it. I certainly did not murder Anita for Gilberte or for any other woman. Nevertheless, the translation of the letter in court did sound bad. Blackman read it aloud, punctuating each sentence with a knowing glance toward the jury and stressing certain words and phrases which, I am sure, Gilberte had never meant to be stressed.

Translated, it ran something like the following:

August 8, 1919

Dearest Peter,

Perhaps I should not write to you... but you forgot to forbid it. It seems so long ago that we parted in the garden! I sit there seldom nowadays because invariably it evokes sad memories and I do not wish to think about you. That would be sheer masochism, nothing more. Oh, Peter, if only you knew how wretched I am! By now you are with your wife,
pretending
that you are happy. For you are pretending, you know. You can't possibly be happy with that woman. From what you have told me about her, I am sure that she doesn't care for you... at least not half as much as I do. That is the terrible part about life: the people who love are rarely loved in return. Sometimes I find myself d reaming that one morning you will awake and find her gone... run off with another man or—;yes, you've guessed it—;dead. With her out of the way, I know that you'd come back to me, wouldn't you, Peter? But it is just a dream. I cannot hope for so simple a solution to my problem... the problem that is turning me from a young girl into a sour old woman.

I suppose it is useless to ask you to write. You will, as always, follow the dictates of your heart.

Your miserable,

Gilberte.

Sitting there day after day in court, I watched the chain of circumstantial evidence grow stronger. After each witness testified, I saw the worried frown upon the face of my lawyer deepen. He was a very conscientious chap, Mr. Bristol; and I am sure he believed me absolutely innocent. If this was so, he was the only person, aside from Doctor Turnbull, who did.

They subpoenaed my assistant, Tom Murphy, who grudgingly admitted that he had heard Anita and me quarreling; had seen the carving-knife—;State's Exhibit C—;in my hand when I answered the door; and that he had delivered to me, at my request, a potent compound of sodium amytal upon the night in question.

“Did you hear any of the words, Mr. Murphy?”

“Yes, I'm afraid I did. I heard her scream....

“Go on, Mr. Murphy. What did she scream?”

“I heard her yelling that he was hurting her.”

The prosecution then went on to establish that I had been in a rare fury all through the day of August 20th. They called Mrs. Wainscott and Mr. and Mrs. Mackintosh to the stand. The last mentioned witness so deftly misused her words that the jury was left with the impression that I had drawn and quartered her precious Jackie instead of mildly spanked him.

Next, to my astonishment, Anita's extracted teeth were offered in evidence. The prosecution suggested that I had knocked them loose from her mouth with an angry blow!

Photographs depicting the scene of the crime, the wrecked kitchen and living-room, the preponderance of blood and the gory trail to the lake shore made the jury shudder and glance at me as though I were some grotesque curiosity. The blood-encrusted carving-knife; a torn, blood-soaked dress of Anita's which I had not been shown before; and my own stained trousers completed the major points of the State's case.

But they were unable to produce a
corpus delicti.

Counsellor Bristol made much of this; it was his entire case, in fact. “How can there be a murder,” he demanded, “without someone getting killed? And if someone was killed, who has seen the body? Lord Hale and Sir Edward Coke, those world-famous interpreters of law, positively forbid convictions unless the fact of murder has been proven. A
corpus delicti
must be established! And to establish the same, there must first be a body and proof that the deceased perished by a criminal agency. It is easy to understand why these precautions must be taken. To quote Blackstone: 'It is far better that ten guilty escape than one innocent man be punished and made to suffer for naught.' In this case, there were no eye-witnesses to the crime... if such a crime did actually take place. How then can we assume that on the night of August the twentieth this man did feloniously assault and kill his wife? The State has produced slim evidence indeed that this man was in love with another woman I From the letter, State's Exhibit B, it is admitted that the woman was in love with the Defendant. But by what evidence can the State prove that my client reciprocated her feelings? As a matter of fact, is it not more logical to suppose that, if my client really loved this woman, he would not have returned to his wife at all? The State has proved nothing of any importance. They have placed many articles in evidence but they have not proved, within the faintest shadow of a doubt, that these were used to commit a crime. The very weapon, this blood-stained knife, which the State presumes was the death agent; by what right can my worthy opponent claim such was the case? How does he know that death was not brought about by poison, by strangulation, by a pistol? How does he know there has been a death at all? Certainly there is nothing more innocuous than a sleeping powder! How has the State shown that it was used to drug a victim in order that murder might be done without a struggle? And regarding the heated quarrel the State makes so much of: does every petty argument between husband and wife always lead to violence and homicide? Show me the man who has never had words with his wife! And take note of this, gentlemen of the jury. A man administers a much-deserved spanking; does that label him a potential killer? If that were so, how many parents would now be languishing in prisons! I have said before, and I will say again, that it is up to the prosecution to prove my client guilty. He is not required to prove his innocence! Has the State done so? Have they proved that Peter Thatcher lies when he says that the teeth, marked State's Exhibit D, were extracted by a New York City dentist? There is no case here!”

When my lawyer had finished summing up, Assistant District Attorney Blackman got to his feet. “The overwhelming evidence of murder in this case,” he began, “is quite sufficient for us to presume death. By the trail of blood leading down to the shore of the lake, we can be certain, within the faintest shadow of a doubt, that the body was dragged there and thrown in, perhaps weighted down with stones. It is difficult to recover a body thus disposed of. The shifting currents of any large body of water, particularly a so-called bottomless lake like Cayuga, will ofttimes carry whatever has been thrown in, back and forth. If the body is weighted, it is possible that it may never be recovered.” Blackman paused, pointed an accusing finger in my direction, and then went on in a grand manner. “Are we to allow a murderer to go unpunished because he has been clever enough to successfully destroy the evidence of his guilt? Picture for yourselves, gentlemen of the jury, what chaos would come if we established such a precedent here in this courtroom! A fiend could commit a murder on the high seas, before a hundred witnesses, and, tossing his victim over the rail, laugh at our courts if the body was not recovered! Here we have a man, a person
known
to have suffered mental relapses due to shell-shock;
known
to have engaged in a furious battle with his wife;
seen
with this same knife, now covered with blood, in his hand by one of the witnesses who inadvertently interrupted the fight;
caught
by an officer of the law, whose testimony you heard; and
clad
in these bloody trousers! What more can you ask? You have heard read a passionate appeal from this man's mistress that he kill his wife and return to her side. The Defendant swears that he was unable to read that letter. Do you believe that? Would that woman have written so dangerous a letter to him in a language she knew he could not understand—;
without getting someone to translate it for him?
You
know
that the Defendant sent his victim into New York City on the afternoon of August the twentieth. Isn't it logical to suppose that, in view of the evidence, he did this to get her out of the way so that he might more carefully set the scene for his heinous deed? You have heard sworn testimony to the fact that Peter Thatcher ordered a sleeping powder—;ostensibly because his wife's teeth were giving her trouble. Yet, we are unable to extract from him the name of the dentist he claims she visited! Is it logical to suppose that a man would be ignorant of the identity of his wife's dentist? Can we not safely assume that the sleeping powder was intended—;no, was actually employed—;for quite another purpose? We must not overlook the fact that the Defendant was making use of a potent drug, the use of which is forbidden unless upon a physician's written prescription. And furthermore, gentlemen, remember that the Defendant, when I frankly questioned him,
did not even bother to deny that he was guilty of the charges as set forth in the indictment!
To the question, 'Peter Thatcher, didn't you drug and kill your wife on the night of August the twentieth, using this knife as a weapon and later disposing of the body, by throwing it into the lake?' he replied: 'I don't know! I really don't know! There was no reason why I should have killed her!'“ Here, the Assistant District Attorney waxed violent. He pounded emphatically upon the jury-box rail. “Is that the answer an innocent man would make? Is it? Can we, as citizens engaged in meting out justice, possibly free a man who is not himself convinced of his own innocence? How can there remain the slightest doubt but that somewhere in the chill waters of Lake Cayuga floats submerged the ghastly remains of the young wife Peter Thatcher so ruthlessly slew in order that he might return to the obviously depraved woman he really loved! Are we to permit this? You have noticed that the Defense is based only upon one detail: that the forces of Nature have prevented us from establishing the missing corpse. With the body of the woman, we would have a clear case.
But,
are we so blind, so idiotic, so unwilling to be intelligent that we must, like Doubting Thomas, peer into the very wounds? Cannot even a child perceive that a murder has been committed and that the perpetrator has been apprehended and brought to justice? This man, Peter Thatcher, claims that he loved his wife and that she loved him. If this is so, and he did not brutally murder her, I ask the Defense just one thing:
Where is Anita Hunt Thatcher?”