Double Jeopardy (16 page)

“Peter, you must let me explain! You've always been fair and I know you'll understand how I felt! I married you but I loved him.” She pointed to Carpenter's lowered head. “I just couldn't stand being away from him. You know how that feels. You've been in love, haven't you?”

“I loved you,” I reminded her tonelessly.

Yes, I had been in love with her, it was true. But she had died a long time ago. Besides, she was not the same. Time and the knowledge of her evil deed had aged her. There were gray threads mingling with the blonde that the hair dye had missed; there were little crow's feet at the corners of her eyes; she looked sallow, unhealthy, a lean caricature of her former self. The only familiar part of her was her voice. And that wasn't pretty either. How often had I heard her sob before!

“Now I can understand why you wanted to live in New York,” I heard myself say quietly. My ears were ringing and my voice had the curious quality of seeming to come from a great distance.

“No, no! You mustn't believe that! I swear to you that there was never anything between Leo and me until after... after...”

“Until after I was convicted of killing you?”

She dropped her eyes. “Please, Peter. Don't think that I planned that. I never intended that you should... Do you remember the sleeping powder? Well, I meant to take it and I put it in my beer. But then I felt like swimming—;you know how I used to swim off my grouches—;so I drank what was in the other glass and I forgot to empty my own. I guess you drank the beer with the powder in it.”

I said nothing. There was still a lot of explaining to be done.

“Well, I cut my foot on the sharp stones down by the lake shore. You know where I mean. You used to warn me about them. It was a bad gash and it bled a lot. I hurried to the house to bandage it. You were asleep, Peter. I guess it was the powder. I held an old dress to the cut to keep the blood from getting on the rug. Oh, I shook you and shook you but you wouldn't wake up! I wanted you to go for a doctor. I was getting faint and I was bleeding all over the furniture. Some even got on your clothes....”

I still said nothing. Hearing her confession was like living a scene from life I had missed.

Anita went on breathlessly. Her words tumbled out so rapidly that at times I could scarcely understand her. But I began to see her for the first time. I began to realize that there is more to a woman than a lovely exterior and that even a devil may wear wings.

“At last I gave up and went into the kitchen. I knew that there were no bandages in the medicine-chest upstairs, so I began to cut strips from my dress to bind up my foot. Finally, I managed to fix it. That's how the blood got on the knife! Oh, Peter, I didn't have any idea what would happen when I left you that night! Really, I didn't. I was so angry at you for being so stubborn and I missed Leo and... Oh, can't you understand?”

She was bordering on the hysterical but I remained unmoved. Indeed, I was surprised at my own objective attitude. In the past, Anita's tears had never failed to impress me. Like a dog responding to his master's whistle, I had come running at the first sob. But not so now.

“Oh, I know I did a terrible thing when I didn't come forward at the trial. But I was so sure you'd be freed. After the verdict I would have come forward, Peter... but I thought that if the case was appealed, the decision would be reversed! How could you have murdered me? I wasn't dead. Then, right afterwards, we sailed for Vienna.” She paused to catch her breath. “Then, too, I thought that you might interfere, try to take me away from Leo!”

I looked toward my wife's lover. He had not moved nor had he put in a word. “How did the lamps get broken and the table overturned?” I asked.

She acted as though she hadn't heard me... but I knew she had. “Oh, please forgive me!” she wept. “It's all over now! If I had even dreamed that leaving you would have brought all this!”

“How did the lamps get broken and the table overturned?”

“Peter, tell me you forgive me! It was all a mistake, I tell you! O, God, I know I've done a terrible thing! If only I... Will you, Peter?”

I looked her squarely in the eyes. They were very dark blue now—;almost coal-black in the pupils like a sick animal's. No matter what the world may think and no matter what the psychologists theorize, in that moment I was saner than I had ever been before. No dramatic haze came before my eyes; no fit of anger lashed me to a fury. So calm was I, that she never saw me take the pistol from my pocket. I held her gaze and my eyes did not give me away.

“I forgive you, Anita,” I said.

Then I pressed the trigger.

With the sound of the shot which echoed and re-echoed through the house, the doctor sprang to his feet. His eyes were almost popping from his head as he watched Anita slip to her knees and then drop limply to the floor.

“My God!” he moaned.

I can't remember much more than just that. Faintly, I recollect hearing the sound of feet running toward the room and the crash of the door being flung open. Also, I was conscious that there were many people pressing around me until I felt suffocated. But everything else is vague. Maybe the shell-shock malady came back for a spell.

Later on, I became aware of myself while riding down to police headquarters in a Squad car, flanked on either side by a burly plain-clothesman. They did not seem to be paying much attention to me for they were talking among themselves as though I wasn't there.

“Right through the heart. He sure must have been close, too. Her dress was burned.”

“Yeah. I wonder why he croaked her?”

“Oh, we'll get it out of him down at headquarters.”

“Don't be so sure. I think he's a nut. If he ain't, he'll play like he is. Christ, I'm ready to believe he is, right now! Who the hell ever heard of knockin' anybody off before witnesses in the dame's own house?”

“Good lookin' babe, too.”

“Naw. She was old.”

“Well, we'll get a chance at this guy after the line-up.”

The driver of the car, evidently having seen my face in his rear-view mirror, called back over his shoulder. “Hey, boys. The guy's all right now.”

With that, the detectives turned to me at once. One on either side, they started to fire many questions. “Why did you kill her, Johnny?”

“Was that your rod we found on the floor?”

“What's your name, anyway?”

“What was the exact time you did it?”

“Where do you live?”

“Ain't I seen you some place before?”

“Yes,” I answered, “I killed her. Only not then.”

“Not then?” they chorused. “What do you mean by 'not then'?”

“I killed her, yes. But that woman has been dead for eighteen years.”

They both stared at me for a minute. Then one of the cops described a circle about his ear with one finger. The other one nodded his head significantly.

Dig out your law books, all you students, all you judges, all you members of the bar. Dust off
Corpus Juris
and Blackstone and Wharton and the Constitution; try, if you can, to convict me. On the surface, it looks simple enough. Here I am, an ex-convict with a record of eighteen years in the penitentiary, and I have just shot down a woman in cold blood. Yes, it was in cold blood. I wasn't angry at her any more than I was angry at that German boy I killed back in 1918.

Come on all you prosecutors! My painfully young, court-appointed counsel challenges the world! His briefcase is empty but for three little slips of paper which, he claims, are enough to break any case against me. Maybe he is right. Who knows? Well, whatever happens, it no longer matters to me. Remember that only yesterday I intended to commit suicide? If the case is lost you will only be doing the job for me.

The District Attorney laughed at me when he visited me in jail the other morning. But I think he was rather worried. He secured the indictment easily enough... although it might not have been so easy had my lawyer's plea to go before the Grand Jury been granted.

“You'll get the Chair, Thatcher,” he threatened. “Better let me have your confession and I'll see what I can do about getting you off with a prison sentence. I can recommend leniency, you know.”

“Oh, I did it, Mr. District Attorney. Why should I deny it?”

“Then you are not going to plead insanity?”

“I don't know what my lawyer is going to do.”

“It'll be easier on you if...”

“See my lawyer.”

I was really quite calm throughout all the days of questioning and interviews. I imagine that all the rigamarole I was—;and still am—; being forced through would be a great strain on a person. It was not much of a strain on me. I had been through it before; and while my first trial had me trembling and biting my nails down to the quick, this one lacked the resulting tension. It reminded me of the pinochle games I used to have with Mullins and Carter and the Sarge when we were all of us broke and without a sou and had to play for no stakes.

I have a late edition of a paper in front of me with my picture on the very first page. It isn't a very complimentary study of me for, you see, it was taken by a persistent staff photographer... through the bars. But, if I do not appreciate the picture, the article accompanying it highly amuses me. The lead line reads: “While the alleged slayer of pretty Anita Thatcher paces the floor of his cell in the Tombs, brooding over the blood he is charged to have spilled, preparations are being made for the burial of his victim tomorrow afternoon....”

Brooding? What an imagination! I am not at all sorry that I killed Anita. Should I be? Except that I was born a fool, I have her to blame for what I have become.

In the courtroom this morning, the prosecution trotted out a score of witnesses in short order. By their testimony they placed me in the room where the crime was committed and at the time specified. This time, of course, the
corpus delicti
was established and the jury learned that I was seen committing the crime by one witness and found with the gun in my hand by others.

The District Attorney opened the case with a short speech that went something like this: “I have never seen a more open and shut case of murder in the first degree. We have everything —;weapon, eye-witnesses and motive. It will be proved in this courtroom that the Defendant shot and killed his ex-wife because he was jealous of her marriage to one of the principals in the case. We will show you that the crime was premeditated, that the Defendant came to the apartment of the deceased woman with a gun in his pocket for the express purpose of carrying out his infamous plan of murder. We will prove to you, by means of expert testimony, that the bullet which ended the life of the deceased came from the gun belonging to the Defendant. After you have heard all the evidence in the case, there will remain to you only one alternative... to return a verdict of Guilty.”

When the District Attorney had finished, my lawyer got to his feet and said: “The Defense has nothing it would like to say at this time.” His immature voice rising in the court caused a titter of mirth to circulate. Even His Honor concealed a smile as he rapped for order.

Then came the parade of witnesses, one by one. I recognized a chauffeur who had been parked before the doctor's door; the doorman from the building across the street; and a salesman who had happened to be passing as I entered the house. I heard Lily Pierce, the Carpenter's maid, testify....

“Then he followed Mrs. Carpenter toward the study. I ran after him and said that he had no right to go in there. He didn't listen to me. He pushed me away and slammed the door in my face.”

“Did you go in after him?”

“Yes, sir, I did. But when I got inside, the doctor told me that it was all right and not to disturb him.”

“I see. Tell the court, Miss Pierce. Did the doctor act as usual? Or did he appear nervous, excited, frightened?”

“Well, he didn't seem quite himself.”

After many more questions, the State turned the witness over to my attorney for cross-examination. “No questions!” sang out the youth.

As Leo Carpenter, pale and haggard, took the stand, my lawyer leaned over and whispered to me: “You've noticed that I haven't cross-examined any of the witnesses. But there's one fellow I may have to. I've got to establish the identity of the deceased, you know.”

“Doctor Carpenter,” the District Attorney was saying. “You saw the crime being committed?”

“Yes. I was there in the room,” he replied. As he said this, our eyes met across the courtroom. I am sure that there was sympathy and understanding in his and the reluctant manner in which he testified on the stand seems to bear me out in this theory. Perhaps he felt that I had only taken just redress for my injuries by killing Anita.

When the State had finished with the witness, my own counsel approached him. The prosecution rested.

“Doctor Carpenter, what relation were you to the deceased woman?”

He hesitated for a brief moment. “No relation whatever,” he admitted. “Anita was Mrs. Peter Thatcher.”

I heard a murmur of surprise in the court and a few newspaper reporters tried to leave in search of telephones. Over the noise, I heard the next question.

“You were not the husband of the deceased?”

“No, I was not.”

“In all the eighteen years you had been living together as man and wife you never married her?”

“No. How could I? She was Mrs. Peter Thatcher.”

“She was the same woman who was known to you as Anita Thatcher back in the year 1919?”

“She is... she was.”

“Very well. That is all. Will the State allow the identification of the deceased or shall I call more witnesses as part of the Defense?”

“The State allows the identification.”

There was a two-hour adjournment for lunch, following which the Defense resumed the floor. “Your Honor,” called my boy gladiator, “I have here three papers that I wish to offer in evidence. The first of these is an indictment dated in the year 1919 which states that the Defendant, Peter Thatcher, may be remanded to a court for trial on a charge of murder in the first degree. The victim's name: Anita Thatcher! The second of the papers is a certificate of conviction from the Tompkins County Court, Judge Foley presiding. It states that in the same year Peter Thatcher was convicted on a charge of first degree manslaughter for the killing of the same woman. The third paper is an affidavit from the Warden of the State Penitentiary at Ossining to the effect that Peter Thatcher, sentenced by the forementioned court, did serve the time specified and was formally released after having been imprisoned for eighteen years.