The Accused - Harold R. Daniels (best novels for students TXT) 📗

the place like a club. She spent a little money and she was an attraction to the place.

Gurney: How long was she a regular?

Murphy: Almost from the time she moved into the neighborhood. That was a while after New Year’s.

Gurney: Was she a heavy drinker?

Murphy: Not at first. Then, sometimes she’d get started early and have a little more than her share. I’ve seen lots worse. I never had to shut her off.

Gurney: You say that Morlock—the accused—was not a customer.

Murphy: That’s right.

Gurney: Then how did you happen to meet him?

Murphy: I went looking for him. Louise owed me some money.

Gurney: A personal loan?

Murphy: No. A bar tab.

Gurney: Isn’t it against the law for bars to give credit?

Murphy: Sure. But it wasn’t Fagin’s bar that gave her the credit. Take a bartender; if he wants to let a regular run up a little tab on his own responsibility—it’s not his license. Fagin isn’t involved. But if the tab isn’t cleared up, the bartender that served the drinks is stuck for the money. Louise had me stuck. That’s why I looked up her husband.

Gurney: How much did she have you stuck for?

Murphy: Forty-two dollars.

Gurney: Forty-two dollars! That seems like a lot of money for a bar bill.

Murphy: Well, that’s how much it was.

Gurney: How long did it take her to run up this bill?

Murphy: A couple of weeks. I can tell you when I went looking for Morlock. It was Saturday, the 28th of April. The reason I know is that tabs are supposed to be cleared up Friday. I had so much money out that I wasn’t going to get any of my own pay. So I gave her one day and then went looking for him.

Gurney: And you found him?

Murphy: Sure. I kept watching out the window for him to come down the street. I already told you I had somebody point him out to me. I walked out to him and I said, “Mr. Morlock?” He said, “Yes,” like it was a question. So I told him about the money Louise owed me.

Gurney: What was his reaction?

Murphy: Well, he already looked worried, nervous. When I told him about the forty-two dollars, he flinched as if I’d hit him. Then he apologized for his wife and said he didn’t have any money right then but that he’d take care of it just as soon as he could. Then he said, “She won’t be around any more.”

Gurney: What did you think he meant by that?

Liebman: Objection—

*

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Alvin Morlock. Direct testimony of James Murphy.

Louise awoke on the morning following the incident with Eddie and heard Morlock moving about the kitchen. She lay still, looking around the room and planning the words of explanation she would use. Her purse had been picked up, together with its contents and placed on the dresser. She looked hastily around for the whisky bottle, hoping that it had been kicked under the bed and but of Morlock’s sight. It wasn’t which meant that he had found it so that she would have to incorporate it in whatever lie she told.

She still had her robe on. Getting up, she went to the bathroom to rinse her face and walked out to the kitchen, a little frightened at the prospect of facing her husband. If she were married to someone like her brother Dominick, she would know what to expect. A smash in the face, a beating that would bruise her body—but a beating that was also a form of penance, a beating that was punishment but opened the way to forgiveness. But if she were married to an Old Country man like Dom it never would have happened. By reasoning thus, she transferred some of the blame to Morlock.

He turned as she came into the kitchen. “I’ve got coffee made,” he said. “Sit down and I’ll pour some for you.”

Morlock, looking at her white face, felt an impersonal compassion for her. He had seen the whisky bottle on the bedroom floor. He had seen her underclothing scattered around the room and her body, naked under the robe, and he had drawn his own conclusions about what had happened. He had been able to perceive dimly that she had, in her way, been exacting a form of vengeance for Paul Martin and for his own detachment from her. Also, she was in her middle thirties. Becoming aware that her youth and good looks were disintegrating swiftly, and frightened because she had nothing to fall back on. He had failed her as a prop. Now she was trying alcohol and other men, and she would have to find out for herself what a miserable support they were.

He sat across from her at the kitchen table. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked her.

“I laid down for a nap,” she said. “I didn’t feel very good after Monday night. I woke up when I heard a noise and I saw a man standing over the bed. He had a whisky bottle in one hand. I started to scream and he hit me and told me to be quiet or he’d kill me. Then he took my purse and started looking through it. I was afraid to yell out.”

Morlock asked, “Do you remember what he looked like? Do you want me to report it to the police?” Her story was a lie; he knew it and she knew that he knew it. His question was no more than a tacit acceptance of her transparent little story.

She shook her head. “It would only make trouble and they’d never get him.” Then, wanting to hurt him, she said, “Al, you didn’t ask me what happened then. He raped me.”

Morlock knew she was taunting him with her guilty admission. He turned toward her with the rage of the cuckold rising swiftly in him, caught himself and only said woodenly, “You’d better see a doctor right away.” Then he left the room.

She heard the hall door close behind him, not gently but not slammed either. She stared in the direction of the hall and then cried out to the closed door, “Go on, then! Get out! What do you care what happens to me?” She reasoned with childish logic that if he pretended to accept her story, he should then show the proper reaction. If he didn’t accept it he should have hit her, kicked her. For a moment, when she said that she had been raped she had thought that he was going to smash her. Now, out of frustration and shame she called after him, “You queer, you. You don’t even care about that.”

Her rage quieted and she felt the need for a cigarette. She went into the bedroom for her purse; when she opened it she saw three dollar bills. There had been no money in the purse. Eddie had taken the last five-dollar bill. Al must have put it in there. It did not occur to her in her anger that he might have put the money in her purse out of consideration. She began craftily to guess what his motive had been. The amount was significant. Three dollars. Three bucks. Enough for cigarettes and a movie and two or three drinks. Or, if you skipped the movie, quite a few drinks.

She bathed and dressed and turned on the television set to kill time until after lunch. Fagin’s was open in the morning hours but the chairs were still stacked on the tables and Jimmy would be busy cleaning up for the day’s trade. Unable to accept her rejection by Morlock or the humiliation by Eddie, she waited until one o’clock to go out. When she did go she approached Fagin’s with some hesitance. Eddie, she was nearly certain, would hardly dare to come back to the place after what he had done. She might have called the cops for all he knew—and she had had a perfect right to. Still, wondering what she was going to do about it, he might be hanging around or he might have talked to Jimmy on the telephone. She decided to be bold about it; she had either to be bold or not go in at all. She straightened her shoulders and walked in, smiling. “Hi, Jimmy,” she greeted the bartender. It was hard not to look around to see if that bastard Eddie was in the place.

Everything was all right; she sensed immediately that Eddie had not come back. Jimmy said, “Hello, Louise. Drink?”

“Just beer,” she said lightly.

The three or four men in the place looked up and nodded or spoke. Frank, the bookie, held out his Armstrong, not speaking. It was all right. And if Eddie did come around later, she would have her own version of what had happened—one that would make him look stupid.

She left Fagin’s place in the afternoon in time to make Morlock’s supper. There was food in the refrigerator; not much, but enough to make a passable meal. When he came in he was burdened with two paper sacks of groceries. Trying to show me up, she thought, showing me that he doesn’t trust me even to go to the supermarket, letting everybody know what a lousy wife I am.

Morlock greeted Louise quietly. He did not kiss her—never again was to kiss her—and after silently eating his meal, he sat down in the living room and read the paper while she washed the dishes. They spent the evening in perfect decorum, speaking little. After she went bed, he walked into the bedroom. She had turned out the light but she could see his silhouette against the living room door and she felt a happy, eager anticipation. Maybe she was a drunk and a cheat but if he came to bed with her, it was forgiving her in a way and she would show him how nice she could be; make it up to him in the only way that she was any good.

Morlock bent over the bed and took the pillow from his side. He said, “Good night, Louise,” and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. She felt shame for just a moment. Then the shame turned inward, feeding on her, poisoning her. It was in that moment that she made her decision. Whatever happened to her, Morlock was going to be a part of it. She would drag him after her.

He slept on the couch in the living room. She made a point of getting up when she heard him stir and hurrying to the kitchen to start breakfast so that he would not have the satisfaction of acting the martyr. He ate the breakfast she put before him as he had eaten the supper, silently. When he started out for work she called after him—she would almost have preferred biting her own tongue but there was no alternative—“Al, I haven’t got any money.”

He turned to face her; “I left you some yesterday,” he said. “Did you use it all?”

“I went to a movie.”

He reached into his pocket and took out a handful of change. “I’ve only got about a dollar and a half,” he said. “I’ll give you half of it. There won’t be any more until Friday.” He put the money on the table and went out.

At Fagin’s that afternoon, Louise played shuffleboard with much determination but with unbelievably bad luck. Needing to win, she could not.

“Jimmy,” she said finally, “my old man doesn’t get paid until a week from Friday. I guess you’ll have to put me on the cuff.”

Jimmy said easily, “Why sure, Louise. Anything you want.”

She had put Morlock’s payday a week ahead in