Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan

I

Friday night, October 12, 1900.

Dear Judy: We have been all day in Quilterville, attending the coroner's inquest. It was pretty bad. Worse than I had expected. Hank Buckerman was all right, decent as could be. But a fly guy from the district attorney's office was there, trying to show off-make a name for himself; Lord only knows what he was trying to do besides chivy us. His name is Benjamin Thopson. He put the screws on, right enough.

The men on the jury were John Skrope, Roy Ulander, George Houndel, Pete Garret, and a couple of Swedes that have just bought the livery stable Jim Murtaine used to have, down near the river. It was the Swedes, I'll bet, who kept the jury out so long. Two hours and ten minutes, Jude, while we hung around waiting, before they brought in their verdict: Died on the night of October eighth, from the results of a gunshot wound inflicted by person or persons unknown.

None of us said so while we were waiting. None of us has said so yet. But I know what I was afraid of, and I know what the others were afraid of: a verdict against Irene, or against Irene and Chris together. That is what they would have handed us, Jude, just as sure as I'm living to tell it, if it had not been for Aunt Gracia. But I must tell you that later. It is early evening now. I have all night to write in. I want to give you the thing straight, from beginning to end.

I had never been in that courtroom before, and I know you have never been there. It is a dirty, dark hole of a place, with the windows too high and the ceiling too low. They kept the windows shut, and the big coal stove in the centre of the room blazing away, red hot all the way around part of the time, and eating up the air.

Hank, looking like a good-humoured eagle, sat up behind a desk where the judge sits during trials. This smart aleck Thopson and Bruno Ward-the Portland lawyer, you know, whom Father and Dr. Joe have been consulting since Mr. White died-and Mattie Blaine sat at a long table below and in front of Hank's desk. (Mattie had to take the whole works down in shorthand.) We Quilters sat together in a front seat, to the side. The remainder of the room was filled, chiefly, with canaille. While I was in the witness chair I had a chance to size up our audience. I was pleased to see how many people we knew had enough good taste and tact to stay away. None of the Beckers were there, and none of the Youngs. Chris said Tod Eldon was there with his wife, but I didn't see them. None of the Binghams were there. But a quarter section of the room was filled with the Dunlapper tribe.

Dr. Joe testified first. Death was caused by an intrathoracic hemorrhage, due to a bullet shot into the left chest. The bullet entered the left chest between the fifth and sixth ribs, pierced the pericardium without injury to the heart, traversed the lung, and lodged near the left scapula. (I've got this from Dr. Joe since then.)

Thopson asked, "Any possibility of suicide, Dr. Elm?"

Dr. Joe said, none. The absence of a weapon proved that suicide was impossible. Also, absence of powder burns showed that the gun had been fired from a distance of several feet.

Thopson asked Dr. Joe whether he knew what sort of gun had been used. Dr. Joe told him that he had recovered the bullet. That it had been fired, evidently, from a .38 calibre Colt's.

Thopson said: "You were present in the house at the time of the murder, Dr. Elm? You were among the first to discover the body?"

"No," said Dr. Joe.

"Your testimony, then, regarding the absence of a weapon near the bedside, was given from hearsay?"

Dr. Joe said, "If Dick had had a gun in his hand when they found him, the absence of powder burns, and the position of the bullet, and the whole thing would prove that he couldn't have shot himself-if that's what you're getting at."

Thopson said he was through with the witness. Hank excused Dr. Joe and called Irene to the stand.

The procedure, after that, was to call the witness, swear him or her in, ask the name in full, where they lived, what the relationship was to the victim, that sort of thing, and then Hank would say, "Tell the jury what you know about the shooting."

Irene seemed delicate, and pretty, and out of place stuck up there in that dirty old hole.

She told her story straight, just as she had told it to us at home. Except she said that, when she found the door locked she thought that Chris was trying to play a joke on her. She omitted their quarrel, you see-good job, too-and the part about having cried herself to sleep.

Thopson led off by asking, "Is your husband in the habit of locking you out of your room at night, for a joke?"