The Scarlet Letters (20 page)

“I proved it, gentlemen,” said Ellery grimly, “by checking Harrison's withdrawals from his various accounts. I went over those accounts and made notes of his withdrawals. I saw that each time Harrison deposited a substantial sum,
he withdrew within a day or so exactly half of that deposit.

“I then went to Dirk Lawrence's bank and checked Lawrence's deposits. They show that, within a day or so of Van Harrison's withdrawals,
Dirk Lawrence deposited the identical sums in his personal account.

“The identical nature and synchronization of Harrison's withdrawals and Lawrence's deposits can't possibly be dismissed as coincidences. There are too many of them–the same amounts, on dates consistently within a day or so of each other.

“If that doesn't prove to the satisfaction of this or any other court and jury that Lawrence and Harrison were confederates; that Lawrence was not the innocent husband in an ordinary case of adultery; that he was a secret, third party to the affair, unknown to the wife; that therefore his shooting of Harrison and Martha Lawrence was done not to avenge his honor but to shut Harrison's mouth and gain Martha's fortune–if that doesn't prove it, gentlemen, I'll make a public apology to Dirk Lawrence in that courtroom and take an oath never to stick my nose into another case.

“Here are my notes on Harrison's withdrawals; the original bank records from which they come are on exhibit in the courtroom. Here are my notes on Lawrence's matching deposits; they come from the records of the Equity Savings Bank of New York, Fifth Avenue branch, where I got them this afternoon.”

The judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney bent over the papers Ellery had laid on the desk.

Five minutes later, the judge and the prosecutor resumed their seats in silence, and in silence Darrell Irons went back to his window.

Ellery waited.

He was painfully conscious that the jury was waiting, too, beyond the judge's door.

And Dirk …

“There are some features of this case I still don't comprehend,” murmured Judge Levy at last. “I understand how Lawrence could talk Harrison into collaborating on a blackmail plot, but what reason did he give Harrison for simultaneously making it look like an adultery case? Lawrence could scarcely tell Harrison that the adultery was necessary so that he, Lawrence, could murder his wife–and Harrison! – and get off on the plea of the unwritten law. Yet he must have given Harrison some reason that Harrison found plausible. What is the answer to that, Mr. Queen?”

Ellery shrugged. “Lawrence's obvious line was to tell Harrison that his ultimate goal was a divorce. They would milk Martha out of as much as they could through blackmail, and meanwhile Harrison would be laying the groundwork for a future divorce action to be brought by Lawrence on the charge of adultery, with Harrison the co-respondent.

“This completely explains Harrison's cooperation … the trail he deliberately laid for me at Lawrence's instructions or even direction–because undoubtedly Lawrence knew from the beginning what Miss Porter and I were about, and used us very cleverly to further his greater scheme, just as he used Harrison. And Harrison made a very good job of it. He nominated as the very first rendezvous a hotel room. He embraced and kissed Martha whenever he knew or suspected I was watching. He brought her to his home and made her go up to his bedroom with him repeatedly, so that his houseman might later be able to testify to the fact–although Harrison hardly foresaw that Tama would testify to the fact at a murder trial in which he himself was the murderee! He willingly planted some of Martha's personal effects–clothing which of course Dirk Lawrence provided–in one of his bedroom closets, to be found by me and any other party interested in getting evidence for a divorce action. Harrison even went so far as to tell me, in so many words, that he was sleeping with Martha Lawrence. It was a lie, of course, since he could only have been an object of horror to her, but a lie he quite cheerfully told in laying the groundwork for Lawrence of what Harrison never doubted would be a divorce action … Yes, Van Harrison was Dirk Lawrence's willing dupe; and the great irony is that after manipulating his puppets with skill and bringing his plot cleverly and successfully up to its climax, Lawrence flubbed it. His aim wavered, and he failed to kill Martha. He'd done it all for nothing.”

The men were silent.

Then Judge Levy said, “I'm still puzzled, Mr. Queen. After all, Mrs. Lawrence did go to a hotel with that man, she did visit his home and repeatedly retire to his bedroom with him, she did suffer him to embrace her in public, and so forth. How did Harrison make Mrs. Lawrence acquiesce to this appearance of an affair? What was the nature of the weapon Lawrence put into Harrison's hand that compelled Mrs. Lawrence's obedience to his orders?”

Ellery shrugged. “Dirk Lawrence was the only man Martha ever loved. As often happens to a woman who finds her only love relatively late–she was over thirty when she met and married Lawrence–it was for her the epic passion. Whatever the weapon was, then, it was probably aimed at her love for Lawrence. The weapon must have implicated Lawrence in some very serious way, must have seemed to aim an extreme threat to him.

“The most extreme threat, of course, would have been a threat against Lawrence's life. Suppose Martha thought that by playing Harrison's game
she was saving her beloved's life?”

“A crime he'd committed!” said the judge.

“The extreme crime,” nodded Ellery. “Why not? Murder. But not necessarily a murder he had
committed
, Your Honor. All that was required was for Martha to
believe
he had committed a murder. This man is capable of anything, even of concocting a phony murder rap against himself!–an easily exposed phony, of course, so that his safety couldn't be threatened by, say, Harrison's suddenly turning against him; but a phony convincing enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the woman who loved him.

“I think Lawrence gave Harrison some false document or other, prepared by himself, which seemed to prove that Lawrence had murdered someone, and I think Harrison showed this document to Martha and told her that unless she paid him blackmail he would turn it over to the police and send her precious husband to the chair. Something Martha once told me and Miss Porter bolsters this theory. Not long before they met, while Lawrence worked for a publishing house, he became intimate with a girl who was also employed there. The girl, Martha told us, committed suicide.

“Lawrence might well have adapted this incident from his past to the needs of his plan. He might have manufactured evidence to indicate, not that the girl committed suicide, but that to get rid of her he had murdered her.

“And Martha–poor Martha–didn't dare let on even to Lawrence … especially to Lawrence! … what she was mixed up in, for fear of some ‘reckless' action on his part which might bring the whole thing out in the open and seal his fate. And, very likely, the clever Mr. Lawrence–whose ability to concoct fictional murder plots is now brought into revealing focus–undoubtedly got that document back after it had served its vicious purpose. He'd hardly have permitted Harrison to hold on to it, to be found in Harrison's effects after the shooting. So unless Lawrence confesses this part of it, or Martha survives to tell her story, the exact nature of the blackmail weapon Lawrence manufactured for Harrison's use may never be established.”

“But what reason did Harrison give Mrs. Lawrence,” asked the judge, “for these adulterous-looking assignations? It seems to me she'd have suspected a frame-up from Harrison's conduct.”

“I doubt it. Harrison had the best blind in the world for his behavior. He was known as a great lover. It would not have seemed so strange to Martha that, in addition to making her pay him blackmail, Harrison should also try to make time with her. She was probably too busy fighting him off to probe too deeply into his real motive. It would not surprise me, in fact, if Harrison developed a genuine interest in the chase; the situation would have appealed to his cynical make-up. Or, for that matter, if Dirk Lawrence knew it.”

And Ellery stopped thoughtfully.

And then he said, “And I think, Your Honor, that's all of it.”

Darrell Irons turned from the window.

“Judge Levy.” he said, “I wish it explicitly understood that I agreed to defend this case in good faith and because I believed in the validity of my client's injury. I don't any longer hold to that belief. I withdraw from the defense.”

And at a later time the members of another jury filed back into the courtroom from the jury room, and they took their seats, and a man at a table gripped the arms of his chair and looked from face to face in the jury box as if he were trying to discover a well-kept secret; and another judge nodded to the clerk of the court; and the courtroom was still.

And the clerk of the court turned to face the jury box, and he said in a clear voice: “Will the foreman of the jury please rise?”

And a man in the first seat of the first row of the jury box rose.

And the clerk of the court said: “Has the jury arrived at a verdict?”

And the foreman of the jury replied: “We have.”

And the clerk asked: “How does the jury find?”

And the foreman of the jury turned to look Dirk Lawrence full in the face, and he said with considerable distinctness: “We find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.”

And in a little room adjoining the courtroom a pale woman rose and said with a sigh to the man and the girl beside her, “Please take me home.”