Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

Your Witness Helen Nielsen

With a degree of bitterness, a lawyer has been defined as one who can make black appear white or white appear black. Our detestable, forensic hero is singular only in that he proved a red traffic light green.

It was murder, although slaughter was a better term for it — or even assassination. Naomi Shawn settled on murder because it was a word that felt strangely at home in her mind. The crime, by any name, was happening to a bewildered citizen, one Henry Babcock, whose place of execution was the witness stand in Judge Dutton’s court. Henry Babcock was in a somewhat similar circumstance to the late Agnes Thompson, housewife, who had been struck down by a Mercedes-Benz and subsequently buried. Henry was being buried, too; but he had the uncomfortable disadvantage of not being dead.

From her seat among the courtroom spectators, Naomi watched the scene with fascinated eyes. Arnold Shawn was a man of electrifying virility, persuasive charm, and intellectual dexterity. He was a dramatist, a strategist, a psychologist, and could, if need be, display the touch of the poet. He was more handsome at fifty than he’d been at twenty-five, more confident, more successful, more feared and much more hated. He was a lawyer who selected his clients with scrupulous care, basing his decision solely on ability to pay. But once a retainer was given, the accused could sit back with whatever ease an accused can muster and know that his fate was in the hands of as shrewd a legal talent as money could buy.

And the biggest heel.

Naomi Shawn’s vocabulary wasn’t as extensive as her husband’s. He would have found a more distinctive way of describing his own character. In fact, he had done that very thing only a few hours earlier.

“I’m not cruel, Naomi; I’m honest. I could lie to you. It would be easy, easier than you know, my dear. I could prove to you, beyond your innermost feminine doubt, mat I am an innocent, loyal, devoted husband who is passionately in love with you, and everything you think you’ve learned to the contrary is pure illusion. But I won’t lie. There is another woman.”

Naomi tried not to listen to echoes. Arnold was speaking, and Arnold commanded attention when he spoke.

“Now, Mr. Babcock,” he was saying, “you have testified that you saw my client’s automobile run a red light, strike the deceased, Agnes Thompson, drive on for a space of some fifty yards, stop, back up to a spot parallel with the body, and then drive on again without my client, Mr. Jerome, so much as alighting from the vehicle...”

Mr. Jerome. He was nineteen. A slight nineteen, with an almost childlike face and guilty blue eyes that stared disconsolately at his uncalloused hands laced together on the table before him. His blond hair was combed back neatly, and he wore a conservative tie, white shirt and dark suit, as per Arnold’s instructions. Kenneth Jerome looked more like an honor Bible student than a cold-blooded hit and run killer. And he was that; Naomi was the one spectator in the courtroom who knew. She had gone to Arnold’s office one morning. He hadn’t been home all night, a situation that was becoming alarmingly frequent. It was time to have a showdown. But young Jerome and his father had come to the office that day, and she was shunted off to another room. She heard the story. Kenneth Jerome couldn’t deny hitting his victim; the police had already traced his car to the garage where it was being repaired.

“I didn’t know I’d hit a woman,” Kenneth Jerome explained. “I didn’t see anyone. I thought I felt a thud, but it’s open country out near the airport. Sometimes you hit a rabbit or even a cat late at night. And it was late. Somewhere near three-thirty, I think. Anyway, I thought that’s what happened when I got home and saw my right front fender. I thought I’d hit a rabbit or a cat.”

And Arnold’s voice had queried him from across the desk.

“Is that what you told the police?”

“Sure, it is. What else could I tell them?”

“Is there a traffic signal at that intersection?”

“There is — but there wasn’t another car in sight.”

“Was the signal with you, or against you?”

“It was with me. It was green.”

“Is that what you told the police?”

“Sure, it is. I said the woman must have tried to cross against the light. I didn’t see her at all.”

And then Arnold had smiled. From the next room, Naomi couldn’t see the smile; but she could hear it in his words.

“Very good, Mr. Jerome. Now, unless you want me to throw this case back in your teeth, tell me what really happened last night. I don’t deal with clients who aren’t honest with me...”

Honest was one of Arnold’s favorite words. It had an exceptional meaning to him.

“To be perfectly honest with you, Naomi, I never did love you. Not the way a man wants to love a woman. Your father had influence and I needed a start. It was that simple.”

Echoes. She pushed them from her mind. She had come to watch Henry Babcock take his punishment for being a good citizen.

Arnold’s voice came again. “You were standing on the sidewalk near the intersection at the time of the accident, is that right?”

Henry Babcock was merely nervous at this stage of the cross-examination. He was a rather slight man, balding, had a clean shaven face and wore thick lensed glasses that magnified his eyes owlishly. He might have been Arnold’s age, Naomi realized with a sense of incredulity. There was no other similarity. Henry Babcock looked shabby and servile. There was a natural elite, Arnold had always maintained, that was predestined to govern any society. At the moment, the validity of his theory seemed self-evident.

“Not exactly,” Henry Babcock answered. “I was sitting on a bench at the bus stop, waiting for a bus.”

“And how far was the bench from the intersection, Mr. Babcock?”

Henry Babcock hesitated. “I don’t know as I could say, exactly. Not very far.”

“Not very far.” Arnold smiled. He was always dangerous when he smiled. “That doesn’t help the jury much, does it, Mr. Babcock? Can’t you be more specific? Was it as far” — he turned slowly, his eyes sweeping the courtroom and finally coming to rest — “as from where you’re sitting to where the defendant is sitting?”

“Well, now, I don’t know—”

“Yes or no, Mr. Babcock?”

The question was like a whip. Henry Babcock straightened his glasses and sat at attention.

“Well, yes,” he said.

“The bench was the same distance from the intersection as you are from Mr. Jerome at this moment?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. Now please continue and tell the jury just what happened...”

What had happened? Naomi’s mind would wander, no matter how she tried to keep it in line. Was it really as simple as Arnold had said — merely a marriage of convenience? It was difficult to believe. She knew why she’d married Arnold. She had loved him; she still loved him, in spite of what he’d become. Was she somehow responsible for that? She’d tried to be a good wife and mother; she tried to keep up with Arnold’s dazzling success...

“Mr. Babcock” — Arnold’s voice intruded on the memories again — “I want you to clarify one detail. You say that you didn’t see Agnes Thompson prior to the accident. You were sitting on the bench waiting for a bus. Mrs. Thompson approached the intersection from the east—”

Someone had set up a blackboard in view of the judge and the jury. On it was drawn the intersection with crosses indicating the location of the bench and Henry Babcock, the spot where the accident occurred, and now, at Arnold’s instruction, another cross for Mrs. Thompson approaching the intersection.

“We know that she came from the east,” Arnold continued, “because we know that she had been visiting a sick grandchild and was returning to her own home, six blocks distant, only after the grandchild had shown signs of recovery and gone to sleep. Presumably, Mrs. Thompson was weary after the strain of her vigil; presumably, she walked with a heavy tread — she was a rather heavy woman. How do you account for not hearing Mrs. Thompson approach the intersection, Mr. Babcock?”

Henry Babcock appeared puzzled. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully with one hand, and the light glinted off the lens of his eyeglasses. The staring eyes of the jury and the courtroom seemed to bother him. The question bothered him, too.

“I didn’t say that I didn’t hear her,” he answered.

“Then you did hear her.”

“I didn’t say that, either. Maybe I heard her. I don’t remember. I was tired, too. I’d just come from work.”

“At the Century Club?”

“Yes sir. I clean up there after the place closes at two o’clock.”

“Two a.m., that is.”

“Yes, sir.”

Two a.m. It was difficult to find an accident witness in broad daylight; but when, a few days after taking the case, Arnold had received an urgent telephone call from Jerome Sr. at a similar hour of a different morning, he knew there was work ahead. It was in the downstairs hall. Arnold had just come in. He still wore his black Homburg and black topcoat over his tuxedo. Naomi had descended most of the way down the stairs, having started when she heard him come in. He took the call in silence, concluding it with a curt assurance that he would handle everything. He’d dropped the telephone back into the cradle for a moment; then took it up again and dialed.

“Fran? Arnold here. Sorry to call you now, but something’s come up. The Jerome case — a witness. Yes, the police are keeping him under wraps; but old man Jerome just got wind of it at a cocktail party and passed the word along. Now, here’s what I want you to do. Get the wheels rolling. Get everything you can on Henry Babcock. That’s right. Babcock. He’s a janitor, or porter, or some such thing at the Century Club. He was waiting for a bus to go home after work when the accident happened. I want him tabbed from the year One. You know how.”

Arnold had dropped the telephone back into the cradle and turned around. Naomi was at the bottom of the stairs by that time. He stared at her without seeming to see her at all.

“Is that who she is?” Naomi had asked. “Is it Fran, your secretary?”

Arnold’s eyebrows had a way of knitting together when he was annoyed. At that moment she hadn’t been sure whether he was more annoyed with her question or with Jerome’s call; but it was probably the latter. She didn’t even possess nuisance value any more.

“Is that who who is?” he’d asked.

“The woman you’ve been with tonight.”

She’d reached out and straightened his tie. Old-fashioned as it was, and Arnold did hate being old-fashioned about anything.

“You’re talking nonsense, Naomi. Go to bed.”

It was the way to dismiss a child. He’d stalked upstairs, his mind busy with the problem of Henry Babcock, good citizen, bent on the folly of doing his duty...

And so they were in the courtroom, and Arnold was solving his problem.

“... so, at approximately half-past three, having finished your work at the Century Club, you were sitting on a bench at the bus stop waiting for transportation to take you home. Where do you live, Mr. Babcock?”

It was an innocent question. Henry Babcock answered without hesitation.

“In Inglewood,” he said. “I’ve got a three-room apartment.”

“And do you live alone?”

“Yes, sir. Since my wife died three years ago.”

“Since your wife died,” Arnold repeated. “My sympathies, Mr. Babcock. It must be lonely, coming home to an empty apartment.”

The prosecutor stirred uneasily. He seemed to sense some ulterior motivation behind the question. Before he could object, Henry Babcock, who sensed nothing but the discomfort of the witness box, had answered.

“Yes, sir, it is,” he said.

“But you do have friends.”

“Friends?”

“At your place of employment. I believe the Century Club employs entertainers, including several very attractive young ladies. I understand that you do little favors for them, such as bringing coffee to the dressing rooms—”

The prosecutor leaped to his feet.

“Your Honor, I object to this line of questioning. We aren’t here to ascertain the witness’s sociability, or to delve into his personal life.”

Arnold turned toward him, smiling.

“And why aren’t we?” he asked. “The witness has testified in direct contradiction to the sworn statement of my client. Obviously, one of these two men is either mistaken or an outright liar. I see nothing objectionable, in attempting to establish the character of the witness. For that matter, I see nothing objectionable — although the learned prosecutor seems to differ with me on this point — in a lonely widower bringing coffee to a ladies’ dressing room.”

There was something diabolical about Arnold in action. Naomi was beginning to realize that. In a few words, he’d turned the prosecutor into an unwitting counsel for the defense. The man sat down, chastened and confused.

Arnold turned back to Henry Babcock.

“Agnes Thompson approached the intersection from the east,” he resumed. “That means that she came from behind you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” Babcock answered.

“Yes, because you sat on a bench parallel to a street running north and south. The bench” — Arnold referred to the blackboard again — “is on the southeast corner of the intersection. The signal, which you have testified was red when my client’s automobile struck Mrs. Thompson, is approximately ten feet north of the bench, which would have been to your right as you sat facing the street. Correct?”

Henry Babcock adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to follow Arnold’s indications on the blackboard map.

“Yes, that’s correct,” he agreed.

“And so, you were sitting on the bench, tired after the night’s work.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And alone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Waiting for a bus to take you home to your apartment where you live alone.”

Babcock’s forehead had corrugated into a puzzled frown, but he answered.

“Yes, sir.”

“You looked at the signal, and saw that it was red.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And before it changed to green, my client’s automobile raced past the intersection, striking down Mrs. Thompson, whom you hadn’t noticed prior to the accident—” Arnold paused, as if only at that instant discovering a flaw in the testimony. “Now, that does seem strange,” he mused aloud. “You turned your head to the right and saw that the signal was red. Why didn’t you also see Mrs. Thompson preparing to step down into the cross-walk?”

There was a slight murmur in the courtroom. Arnold’s strategy was beginning to take hold.

“I don’t know,” Babcock answered. “I guess she wasn’t there yet when I looked.”

“Then you must have looked away from the light for a time.”

Babcock hesitated, sensing a trap.

“The light was red!” he insisted.

“But you didn’t see Mrs. Thompson.”

“It was dark.”

“Isn’t there a street lamp at that intersection? Think, Mr. Babcock.”

“There’s a street lamp, but it only shines so far. After that, it’s dark.”

“And yet Mrs. Thompson would have had to come into that arc of light, wouldn’t she?”

“Maybe she came too fast for me to see her. Maybe she was running.”

“Running?” Arnold caught up the word and dangled it before the ears of the court. “Now, why would she have been running, Mr. Babcock? Haven’t we already established that it was late, very late, and that she must have been weary from sitting up with a sick grandchild?”

Henry Babcock was an uncomplicated man who, very likely, had never sat in a witness box before in his life. He’d come to do his duty, and yet, by answering extemporaneously a few minor questions he hadn’t thought through, he’d gotten himself into trouble. He glanced pleadingly at the prosecutor, who was helpless at the moment, and then got himself into worse trouble.

“Maybe she was afraid.”

“But why should she have been afraid?” Arnold demanded.

“Because it was so late. It’s not safe for a woman out alone at that hour. Things happen. You read about it in the paper all the time.”

Arnold listened carefully to Henry Babcock, so carefully that he caught up the entire courtroom in his attitude and everyone listened, carefully.

“I read about it?” he echoed. “What do I read about?”

The accentuated pronoun forced Henry Babcock to a correction.

“I mean, people do,” he explained. “Anybody.”

“I think what you mean,” Arnold interpolated, “is that you read about it all the time. Now, just what do you read?”

Henry Babcock was perspiring freely. He didn’t bother to wipe his brow.

“Things that happen,” he said. “Robberies, attacks—”

“And you always read about these things, is that right, Mr. Babcock? When you’re all finished bringing coffee to the ladies’ dressing room, and cleaning up the deserted club, you go home to your apartment, alone, and read about terrible things that happen to women who go out on the streets at night—”

Arnold’s voice was an instrument played with professional skill. It was impossible not to be drawn along with it. But he got no farther before the prosecutor was on his feet shouting an objection. Arnold smiled at him with an expression of tolerant patience, and only Naomi understood what was happening. The innocent must always be made to appear guilty. This was Arnold’s secret of success.

“... I don’t want a scene, Naomi. This woman need never have come between us if you hadn’t insisted on a showdown. I’m not planning to divorce you, or to allow you to divorce me. I can’t afford a scandal, and you have the children to consider even if my career means nothing to you...”

The innocent must always be made to appear guilty.

“Your Honor,” Arnold continued, with mock humility, “I’m deeply sorry if my remarks have caused prejudice in the minds of the jury. It wasn’t my intention to infer that the witness has socially undesirable tendencies. Nevertheless, I’m still curious as to how he could have turned his head to observe the traffic signal and not have seen a woman about to step out into the crosswalk. If he was tired, he might have been dozing; but then, he wouldn’t have seen the signal. If, however, he was alert enough to notice the signal, why didn’t he see Mrs. Thompson?”

With these words, Arnold swung back to Henry Babcock.

“Or did you see her, Mr. Babcock?”

Henry Babcock drew back in the box.

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure, Mr. Babcock? A few moments ago you were positive that you didn’t see her; a few moments later you thought that you might have heard her. Now you can’t seem to explain why you didn’t see her. Isn’t it possible that you did see her? That perhaps you spoke to her?”

“No—”

“That you approached her?”

“No! I never left the bench!”

“You never left the bench, and yet, with an automobile approaching, and surely Mrs. Thompson could have seen the headlights, the victim stepped off the curb and into its path. Why did she do that, Mr. Babcock, unless, as you have suggested, she was startled out of her wits? Was there anyone else in the vicinity at the time?”

Babcock was no longer bewildered; he was furious.

“No!” he shouted.

“Then no one could have startled Mrs. Thompson unless it was yourself.”

“I didn’t say she was startled.”

“But you suggested it. You suggested that she might have been running. These are interesting suggestions, in view of the fact that you knew no one other than yourself was in the vicinity. Since you’ve volunteered this much light on the mystery of what happened at that intersection the night Mrs. Thompson died, perhaps, remembering that you’re under oath, you would like to tell the whole truth.”

Arnold waited for an answer, and the court waited with him.

“I told the truth!” Babcock insisted. “The whole truth!”

“Thank you, Mr. Babcock.”

Arnold stepped back. He seemed ready to release the witness; only Naomi knew it was a feint. There had been another telephone call only this morning. She’d overheard enough to know Henry Babcock wasn’t going to get off so easily.

“... Yes, Fran, he’s going to be tough to crack — too clean. Nothing on him unless I can color up that job of his. What? Do you have proof? Good girl! Of course, it’s enough. I’ll make it enough.”

And then he’d looked up to find Naomi staring at him accusingly.

“What are you going to do to that poor man?” she had asked.

“I’m going to win my case,” he had answered.

“Your client is guilty.”

“Not until the jury brings in a verdict. Don’t look so shocked, Naomi. You can’t be that naive! A courtroom is just like a battlefield. When a soldier’s ordered to take an objective, he can’t consider if innocent people will be hurt. There are no innocent people; there are only the quick and the dead. I’m one of the quick. Because of that, you live in a beautiful home, wear lovely clothes, drive an expensive sedan—”

“Who is the woman, Arnold?”

And that was when he had stopped evading her.

“I’m not cruel, Naomi; I’m honest. I could lie to you. It would be easy, easier than you know...”

Sitting among the spectators in the courtroom, Naomi learned how easy it was.

“Mr. Babcock—” Arnold swung back to face the witness, his sudden movement and the sound of his voice magnetizing attention. “How long have you been employed at the Century Club?”

The change of tactic puzzled Babcock.

“Ten months,” he said.

“I don’t suppose your salary is anything remarkable.”

“I don’t need much.”

“Still, it’s not comparable to — let us say, an instructor of mathematics and mechanical drawing at Freeman High School, which position you held for fourteen years prior to your employment at the Century Club. Tell me, Mr. Babcock, why does a man of your background work as a porter in a cheap night club? Why are you reduced to pushing a broom and running errands for showgirls? Or does this explain better?”

No one was prepared for Arnold’s next move, least of all Henry Babcock. When Arnold reached out and snatched the glasses from his eyes, Babcock rose from the chair, grasped at empty air, and barely steadied himself against the side of the bench short of falling.

“My glasses—” he gasped.

“Your eyes, Mr. Babcock!” Arnold corrected. “Isn’t it true that you relinquished your profession because you were going blind?”

“No! I had cataracts—”

“Because your vision was eighty-five per cent impaired when you underwent surgery eight months ago? Because you were totally color blind?”

Arnold had won his case. Naomi could sense the feeling of the court even before her ears picked up the murmur. By that time, Henry Babcock was trying to explain that an operation had restored vision to one eye and he was awaiting the required full year before a second operation that would restore the other; but few people heard.

“I’ll be good as new!” he insisted. “I’ll get my teaching job back—”

“But you weren’t ‘good as new’ the night you claim to have seen my client go through a red light!”

“With my glasses, I can see color!”

“Out of which eye?”

“The left eye. The one that had the operation.”

“But the signal is to your right.”

“I turned my head.”

“But you didn’t see Mrs. Thompson.”

“I couldn’t. I can’t see out of the sides — only straight ahead.”

“Only straight ahead!” Arnold pounced on the phrase, as if he had been waiting for it all this time. “And how far straight ahead, Mr. Babcock? As far as from where you are sitting to the defendant — that’s what you said, didn’t you?”

Henry Babcock leaned forward, a grotesque figure of a man trying to peer through a fog.

“With my glasses—” he began.

“Your Honor,” Arnold announced, “I move that the testimony of the witness be stricken from the record. It’s obvious to everyone in this courtroom that he is not capable of giving reliable information on anything of a visual nature. The distance from the witness stand to the defendant, which Mr. Babcock has, under oath, declared to be the same as the distance from the bench on which he was seated at the time of the accident to the point at which the accident occurred, can’t possibly measure in excess of thirty feet. I invite the prosecution to check me on this.” There was no need to check. Naomi, remembering, realized when Arnold had set his trap. He was always dangerous when he smiled. “I have already checked the distance between the bench and the place of the accident,” he added, “and it is, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exactly sixty-two feet! Not only is the witness color blind, not only is he incapable of seeing out of the sides of his eyes; he is also completely unable to estimate simple distances. Unless he’s deliberately lying about everything, unless he did leave the bench and does know some reason why Mrs. Thompson stepped out in front of a fast moving automobile, the most charitable conclusion we can reach is that this poor man’s mind has been enfeebled by the double tragedy of losing his wife and almost losing his sight, and is incompetent to testify in a court of law!”

The prosecution roared a protest. Arnold turned toward him with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal.

“Your witness!” he said.

The jury was out fifteen minutes. After the acquittal, Arnold received congratulations with his customary indifference. The courtroom emptied. Naomi watched a defeated little man make his way toward the corridor: Henry Babcock, ex-good citizen. She caught his eyes, magnified by the lenses of the glasses, as he went by. It had been murder. He went out and she waited alone for Arnold.

“So that’s how you take an objective,” she said. “Did you have to destroy his character as well as his testimony? Do you think he’ll ever get that teaching job back now?”

“If he’s man enough,” Arnold said. “That’s his problem, not mine.”

“Your problem is only how to get rid of a bothersome wife, isn’t it?”

Arnold didn’t seem to consider the question worth answering. They went out together. The sidewalk was deserted now except for a dejected man waiting at the bus stop, a man for whom Arnold didn’t have so much as a glance. At the entrance to the parking lot, he looked up and frowned at the sky. It was starting to rain lightly.

“I’m glad you decided to visit court today, Naomi,” he said. “I’ve got a five o’clock appointment and it’s the very devil to catch a cab in bad weather.”

“Five o’clock?” Naomi echoed. “That gives you time to pick up flowers. Shall I stop at a florist?”

“No, thank you, Naomi. Just get your car, please. I’ll wait.”

And Arnold waited. He stood at the edge of the parking lot driveway, so supremely confident that he didn’t so much as step back when Naomi brought the sedan around. He didn’t even have time to change his self-satisfied expression to surprise when she suddenly cut the wheels and slammed her foot on the accelerator.

After the police officer had extracted Arnold’s body from under the wheels, Naomi tried to explain.

“It was a mistake!” she sobbed. “I meant to put my foot on the brake, not the accelerator! It was a terrible mistake!”

A small crowd had gathered, but there was only one eye-witness. The officer turned to him, and for a moment Naomi caught a glimpse of the man’s eyes. The sympathy she’d given him in the courtroom was in them.

“If this woman is the victim’s wife, surely she’s telling the truth,” he said. “Anyway, what I might have seen couldn’t contradict her.” Henry Babcock removed his glasses and blinked at the blur which was the policeman. “It’s a legal fact,” he said, “that I’m not a reliable witness.”