CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Final arguments began the next morning, the crisp, clipped voices of Mason and Greene pounding home their opposing arguments. The case against his client was all circumstantial and could not stand up to examination, Mason announced with scorn. The evidence was sloppy, vague, and given by hysterical witnesses on a witch hunt, people of weak character determined to pin a possible murder on a man of the cloth whose religious affiliation they rejected. And was it murder? There still was no proof of an actual crime! The unfortunate Miss Cornell, having reached the end of the line with her easy sexual favors, had found herself pregnant. Shamed, she had committed suicide. An old and familiar story. “If you were to seek for some of the vilest monsters in wickedness and depravity, you would find them in the female form,” he declared.

This trial was no witch hunt, Albert Greene declared when it was his turn. The people of Lowell had responsibly done what they could to bring a murderer to justice—the fact that it was “a man of the cloth” who had done the deed was irrelevant. Did Lovey Cornell commit suicide? “Impossible,” he told the court. No woman could have hung herself like that; no woman could have inflicted those wounds and bruises on her body by herself. And though the defense was determined to deny it, the letters found in this unfortunate girl’s trunk were clearly traceable to Ephraim Avery. His motive was clear—he had impregnated her, and he solved his problem by murdering her.

Only near the end of his summation did Greene clear his throat and speak to the destruction of Lovey’s character by Mason. “Nothing has given me more unpleasant feelings during this trial than the attempts to impeach the character of that young woman,” he said slowly. “I find it sad and astonishing that the defense has fought so hard to blame her for her own death. This extraordinary attack—which will find its place in our legal history—is meant to tell us that a young woman like this with nowhere to turn is expendable. And that leaves a shadow on our system of justice.”

The courtroom was very still. Greene stood silently, legs spread, his hands linked behind his back. Finally he looked up at the judge. “That is all, Your Honor.” He sat down, but not before locking eyes coldly for a long moment with Hiram Fiske.

“Thank you,” Alice whispered under her breath. She strained to catch a glimpse of Samuel, who sat with his father in their usual place up front. There he was, jaw firm as stone, without expression, looking neither to right or left. If he understood how true Greene’s words were, surely he would show some sign of emotion. But his face showed nothing.

Chief Justice Eddy gave final instructions to the jury shortly before five in the evening. The jurors then filed out of the jury box and vanished through a door leading to the room where they were supposed to sit across from one another at a long table and try to sort out truth from lies. It looked to Alice as if that mantle of responsibility was falling a bit too heavily on their shoulders.

The judge banged his gavel one last time. “Court is adjourned. When a verdict is reached, the courthouse bell will ring.” He stood and, followed by the others, left the room.

It was a warm evening. The crowd drifted off, many in it glancing backward as if loathe to break the invisible cord binding them to the courthouse. It would not be good to stray too far, some murmured. The verdict could come, surely, anytime.

Alice lifted her face to the waning sunlight, walking slowly, trying to exhale the musty smells of the sweat and the dust of the courthouse from her nostrils. She looked neither to right nor to left; she would not tolerate in herself any search for Samuel.

Ahead of her, she saw the doctor outside his surgery, tending his small garden. Alice’s step quickened. She had a goal now.

“Dr. Stanhope, did everything work out properly this morning?”

“Yes,” he said, with a small smile. “All went peaceably.”

“I’m glad,” she said. There was so much more to ask, but she feared being overheard.

“She has a chance,” he said softly. “The sister was kind.”

“Why don’t you join us at the boardinghouse for dinner?” she heard herself asking.

He scrambled to his feet. “Too much to do here,” he said. He looked flustered. “Dinner? Oh, I hardly—” But then he ran out of anything to say.

Alice smiled. “Please,” she said.

Dinner was calm, a swirl of slow-moving parts, all ears straining for the one sound that mattered. Stanhope, his face scrubbed to the hue of an apple, took a second helping of brisket and actually conversed with Mrs. Holloway on the value of medicinal plants. There were no jokes, no laughing. And no one sang or played the piano tonight, and all knew why. But, at least, all who cared about Lovey were together.

Alice drifted out to the porch, inhaling the crisp night air as deeply as she could. She even impulsively wrapped her arms around a pillar—this tangible place was hers, and she would try to hold on to it, come what may.

And she waited.

So did Samuel. Not watching the stars or searching for a glimpse of Boott Hall but in a darkened room hazy with the cigar smoke puffed out in agitated bursts by his brother, Jonathan.

“I couldn’t have made a difference by testifying,” Jonathan said. “It would have just thrown the trial into an unholy mess.”

A small cough from a wing chair by the fireplace. “Can you put that cigar out please? I’m getting a headache,” said Daisy.

Samuel was silent.

“Damn it, Samuel, stop blaming me, will you?” Jonathan was puffing harder than ever. He stood, paced. “The verdict isn’t in, for God’s sake. They’ll convict him.”

“I don’t think so,” Daisy said unexpectedly. “They don’t have the courage.”

“You too? You’ll turn on me, my own sister?”

Daisy said nothing. She picked at a ragged fingernail and pulled herself, tight and small, back into the chair.

“Don’t you feel anything for that dead girl?” Samuel said through clenched teeth.

Jonathan paled. He sat abruptly, and his fingers drummed nervously on the table next to his chair. He tried to say something, but all he could do was look pleadingly to his brother.

There was no getting around it; it was done. Samuel entwined the fingers of both hands and held them to his face. Jonathan was not a villain, not a bad man. He would replay this decision of obedience to Father all his life, or was he, Samuel, just casting an overlay that was his and his alone?

There was a sound. Jonathan stopped pacing. Samuel leaned forward; Daisy started to rise.

The door opened and Hiram Fiske walked in. “Put out that cigar,” he ordered his younger son. “And stop listening for the bell. There will be no decision tonight.”

Not that one, Samuel thought. But another, yes. Soon.