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

was certainly insufficient evidence to justify an arrest at that time. We talked it over. The accused was a teacher at the college. If it got out that we were investigating him for the murder of his wife, he would have been ruined even if he was innocent. The district attorney asked me to make a confidential check and see if there were any indications that Morlock might have killed her: motive—that sort of thing. I found out most of the things that you have been hearing here during the trial. On the 21st—the day after the murder—

Liebman: Objection.

Stewart: I’m sorry. I should have said after the death of Morlock’s wife.

Cameron: That much of the testimony as involves the word “murder” will be stricken. Please be more careful, Chief Stewart.

Stewart: On the evening of the 21st I visited Morlock in his home. I had already learned some facts about the financial trouble he was in. When I got there he was cleaning the woodwork in his kitchen. I immediately thought of bloodstains, but if there were any there he had probably removed them. He had enough turpentine and paint remover on the table to do a good job. I still didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him. I talked to him for a little while and then left.

Gurney: And you arrested him the next day?

Stewart: I did. On the strength of an anonymous telephone call that I received the following morning.

Liebman: Your Honor, I am going to anticipate counsel’s next question. I’d like a ruling on the admissibility of the content of this telephone conversation before any portion of it is brought out to the prejudice of my client.

Cameron: The content of any such conversation would fall within the definition of hearsay and would not be admissible.

Liebman: Thank you.

Gurney: Your witness, Mr. Liebman.

Liebman: Chief Stewart, when you visited Alvin Morlock’s home you found him cleaning woodwork in the kitchen and immediately thought of bloodstains. You knew then, beyond any possibility of doubt, that she had fallen to her death miles away. Then why the rigmarole about bloodstains?

Stewart: I did not know beyond any doubt that she had fallen to her death. As a matter of fact, when I left Morlock’s home I called the medical examiner and asked if it was possible that she had been killed elsewhere and her body later thrown from the rock. I was told that it was not impossible. I thought—I still think—it possible that there had at least been a quarrel in the kitchen. I think that removing paint from woodwork is an unusual activity for a recently widowed man.

Liebman: And the next day you arrested the accused on the strength of an anonymous telephone call. Is this a practice of yours?

Stewart: The anonymous telephone call was one part of what was by then a large mass of circumstantial and other evidence against Morlock. As a matter of fact, the person who made the call is no longer anonymous. I have identified that person, to my own satisfaction, while sitting here in this court.

Liebman: Who was it?

Stewart: The student, Cory. The one who drove Mrs. Morlock to South Danville on the day she was killed. I recognized his voice as soon as he took the stand.

Liebman: You could be mistaken though, couldn’t you?

Stewart: I could be, but I’m not.

Liebman: Well, we’ll leave that for the jury to decide, Chief Stewart. I wonder, however, if you might clear up a little puzzle for me. You have heard Cory testify that he drove Mrs. Morlock to Abram’s Rock. Yet earlier you suggested that the bloodstains on the woodwork in Morlock’s apartment resulted from an assault by the accused on his wife, and that he then drove her to the rock and disposed of her body.

Stewart: I stick with what I said about the bloodstains. I still think there was a fight and the blood was Louise Morlock’s. But now that you remind me about the boy’s testimony, I think it might have happened this way—

Liebman: Never mind the speculation, Chief Stewart.

Gurney: Objection, Your Honor: Counsel asked the witness a question. Now he refuses to allow him to answer.

Cameron: The witness will be allowed to answer, Mr. Liebman. I’ll rule on admissibility when he’s finished.

Stewart: As I was saying, the deceased had Cory drive her out there after a quarrel in order to patch up things with her husband. The accused made no attempt, as far as we can learn, to make any secret of the visits he made to Abram’s Rock. He knew that she would follow him up there, sooner or later, and that way he would avoid the self-incrimination involved in taking her there himself.

He—

Liebman: Your Honor, I must protest the groundless insinuations….

*

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Alvin Morlock. Direct testimony of Dr. Robert Sedge; cross-examination of Chief of Police Charles Stewart.

Morlock made the return trip to Abram’s Rock with the filling station owner trailing behind him, carrying a rolled up stretcher. The man kept asking foolishly, “What happened?” Morlock, needing to think, wished that the man would be quiet. He answered, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” hoping that the man would interpret his answer as the sort of frenzied distraction that he would expect under the circumstances. He had already told the man, back at the filling station, that she had fallen from the rock. Now, he supposed, he wanted a morbid description of the details of the fall. Excitement for a Sunday morning. When they reached the spot where Louise had fallen, the man bent over the crumpled body and then straightened with a theatrically long face.

“It isn’t any use, mister,” he said. “The best thing we can do is leave her here and wait until the ambulance comes.”

Morlock had to get her out of there. He said in grief-stricken disbelief, “Maybe she isn’t dead. Please help me with her. We’ll have to move her out to the road anyway.”

The man bent to unroll the stretcher. “All right,” he said, “give me a hand with her now and we’ll roll her on face up.”

The body was oddly flaccid. The filling station man said, “She must be all smashed inside.”

Morlock bent to pick up one end of the stretcher—the front end. The other man moved to the back to spare Morlock the supposed agony of looking at his wife’s body. With the heavy burden between them, they began to pick their way out of the woods toward the dirt road. The going was difficult and Morlock, not in the best physical condition, felt his heart begin to pound with the effort. Wanting to stop, he nevertheless kept on while the sweat broke out on his face and bile rose in his throat. Every ounce of his strength was being poured into the task of putting one foot down, ignoring the pull at his shoulders and arms, and then bringing the other foot forward in its turn. He hardly knew it when other hands took the stretcher from him.

When he could think again he was in the ambulance and another man—a doctor, he supposed—was looking at him curiously. “Are you all right?” the doctor asked.

The doctor’s eyes were intelligent behind his glasses. Have to be careful now. Don’t overact, Morlock told himself. He turned quickly to look at the stretcher. The doctor had drawn a sheet over Louise’s face. Morlock put his hands up to cover his eyes. He did not want to meet the doctor’s glance. The intelligent eyes would be filled with pity, sympathy for the bereaved husband, and Morlock could not face them. The doctor said sympathetically, “I’m sorry. I understand that she fell from Abram’s Rock.”

Morlock nodded, not speaking.

The doctor was looking at him intently. “Look here,” he said. “You’ve got some nasty cuts on your face. We’d better have a look at them.”

“They don’t hurt,” Morlock said. “I can wait until we get to the hospital. Are we almost there?”

In the hospital efficient hands wheeled the stretcher bearing Louise’s body through one door and other hands ushered Morlock into the gleaming white emergency room. “Might as well clean those cuts up here,” the doctor said busily. “I’m Doctor Sedge, by the way. Then when we’ve got you fixed up you can sit in the reception room and wait for the medical examiner.”

Morlock repeated dully, “The medical examiner? Do we have to report this to him? It was an accident,” wishing almost as he spoke that he had not acted so surprised. He hadn’t thought about it, but he realized that there would be some sort of official inquiry. The question might have a guilty ring to Doctor Sedge.

If it had, the doctor did not show it. “A matter of routine,” he said. “We have to notify him in the event of any accidental death.”

The medical examiner came and there were questions; interminably there were questions before the official, a fat man with an overbearing manner, dismissed him. “That will be all, Mr. Morlock,” he said pompously. “For now.”

Morlock did not, of course, go in to the college on the day following Louise’s death. He called Dean Gorham and was told that certainly, Alvin, we wouldn’t think of your coming in for at least a week. Take as much time as you wish and if there is anything we can do…. Meanwhile, we are terribly sorry about your wife….

Later he called the funeral parlor. Oh yes, Mr. Morlock. A tragic thing. Please accept our heartfelt and so on and of course we’ll be glad to handle everything for you. Ah—is there insurance? We’ll be glad to make financial arrangements, of course….

Of all the people he knew, only Dodson, fat and slovenly and strangely decent, came to see him.

“Al,” he said awkwardly, “I’m going to leave my car with you. You’ll probably need to be getting around. Anything else? I’ve got a few bucks.”

Morlock, deeply shamed, thanked him and saw him to the door. When Dodson was gone he puttered about the house absently. He was not at that time greatly frightened that he would be found out. Apparently Louise’s death had been accepted as an accident. Well, in a way it was.

He had by this time almost convinced himself that he had not struck her hard enough to make her fall. In the kitchen closet he came upon the turpentine and paint remover that he had so hopefully brought home to Louise months ago.

For want of anything better to do—he planned to leave this house and its associations as soon as he could—he brought them out. There was one board in the wainscoting that Louise had started to strip, leaving it half finished. Might as well finish it, he thought. He was scraping the old paint when he heard a knock at the door. Not getting up he called, “Come in.” When the door opened he turned to see blue serge and brass buttons, and then he was frightened.

“Good evening,” the officer said. “I’m Chief Steward. I heard about your wife’s accident. Thought I’d drop in and talk to you about it.”

He was staring at the sandpaper and the paint remover, Morlock saw. It was silly to feel guilty about a thing of which he was innocent, but immediately the act of removing the paint took on a criminal meaning. He said fatuously, “Have a chair, Chief. I was just taking some paint off the woodwork. Something my wife started.”

Stewart said, “No, thanks.” He kept right on staring at the woodwork, Morlock noticed. Looking for bloodstains, he was certain—particularly after Stewart’s next comment, “Did you and your wife quarrel a great deal, Mr. Morlock?”

Morlock answered, “I guess not any more than