The Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 Classic Mysteries!

Jury of One

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1959.

I knew right away that the district attorney wanted this Mrs. Clevenger on the jury.

Pretending to listen to my lawyer question a prospective male juror, the D. A. studied Mrs. Clevenger, sized her up out of the corner of his eye.

There was a dryness in my throat, a fluttering in my stomach — I was on trial for my life. Murder was a capital crime in this state, and they didn’t use anything merciful and clean like a gas chamber. They made you take that last long walk and sit down in a chair wired for death.

It was a nice spring day. The tall windows of the vaulted courtroom were open, letting in a soft, lazy breeze. Speaking quietly and without hurry, the lawyers had been going about the business of picking a jury for a day and a half. The fat, bald judge looked sleepy, as if his thoughts were of trout streams. The whole thing so far had been casual, almost informal. I wondered, considering the difference this day and half had made inside of me, if l was going to be able to sit through the whole trial without screaming and making a break for one of the windows.

To get my mind off myself, I swiveled my head enough to take a new look at Mrs. Clevenger. She was well into middle age; her armor of girdles and corsets reminded me of a concrete pillbox. Her clothing, jewels, and the mink neckpiece draped carelessly over the arm of her chair all added up to a big dollar sign.

I looked at the heavy, blunt outlines of her face which even the services of an expensive cosmetician had failed to soften. You didn’t have to know her; just looking at her would tell you she was rich, arrogant, selfish, merciless. Nothing, quite obviously, mattered to Mrs. Clevenger, except Mrs. Clevenger. And as she cast a passing glance in my direction, her eyes were beady and cold. There was no doubt about her being the kind of person who would have her way, no matter what.

I didn’t like the way she glanced at me, but the D. A. did. He was the sort who could impress women easing past their prime. He had a tall, rangy, athletic build, a rugged face, sandy hair worn in a crew cut. He’d spotted Mrs. Clevenger already as the key juror, the one he would turn those open, warm, brown eyes on, the one he’d address his quiet, reasonable remarks to — if she were chosen. Win her, and he would have the jury. Win her, and the rest of the jury might as well try to move a mountain.

My lawyer finished his examination of the male juror. “He’s acceptable to us, Your Honor,” he said.

The judge stifled a yawn, nodded, plunked indolently with his gavel, and told the juror to step down.

Mrs. Clevenger was the next one to be up for examination. Mentally, I squirmed to the edge of my seat.

My lawyer came to the defense counsel table. His name was Cyril Abbott. His given name fitted him very well, perfectly. He was lanky, had a thin face which made his nose look like a big afterthought, carelessly stuck between drooping lips and narrow eyes. A gray thatch of unruly hair completed the rube picture. But if you looked closely into his eyes, you saw he was a tough old fox with wisdom garnered from countless legal battles.

As he shuffled some papers, Cyril Abbott said, “How you feeling, Taylor?”

“Not so good,” I said.

“Relax. Everything’s under control so far.”

“It’s getting Clevenger on the jury that’s got me worried,” I said.

I was more worried on that point than I was about the witness.

The witness had been one of those fluke things. The killing had looked perfectly routine, just another job, though a little out of my usual line.

It was the only time I’d taken on anything outside the Syndicate. I’d been with the Syndicate quite a number of years. I guess I’d grown to take the job for granted. I was never touched by the law. Few professionals are. We’re given an assignment, flown into a strange city. Our man is pointed out to us. We choose an immediate time and place. We perform our service and are whisked out of town.

The Len Doty job had seemed simple. A scrawny, down-at-the-heels crook, he’d arrived here recently and taken up residence in a fourth rate hotel.

I’d studied Doty’s movements for two days. A thin, harried, nervous man, he’d seemed to have a lot on his mind. He’d been under a strain, as if something big was imminent in his life.

I was the imminent something, only he didn’t know it.

I’d tried to approach this job with the same lack of feeling I had on Syndicate jobs. But here I’d been doing my own planning, and not enjoying the security you had when you were a cog in a huge machine.

By the end of the two days, I knew I had to get the job done. I was feeling a growing nervousness. I didn’t go for solitude. I wanted to be back in the big town, having a drink with men I knew or stepping out with a particular woman who was gaga over my tall, dark ranginess.

I’d kept the thought of fifteen grand — what Doty was worth dead — in the front of my mind. What could go wrong? It was the same as all the others, nothing to connect me with Doty. He’d die, and I’d disappear. The case would eventually slip into the local police department’s unsolved file. There may be no perfect crimes, but the records are full of unsolved ones, and the record was good enough for me.

I decided on the time and place. Both nights, late, Doty went from his flea-bag hotel to a greasy spoon far down on the corner for a snack before retiring.

The block was long and dark, with an alley at its midpoint connecting the street with one that ran parallel to it. It’s always wise to choose an alley that’s open at both ends.

The parallel street was a slum section artery, crowded with juke joints, penny arcades, hash houses. In short, the kind of street to swallow a man up.

I knew the Syndicate big-shots had a rule of planning they tried never to break. Keep it simple.

I kept it simple. The plan was to shoot Doty with a silenced gun in the alley, walk to a garbage can, ditch the unregistered, wiped-clean gun, continue to the crowded street of joints, mingle, catch a city bus to the downtown area. There, I’d return to the good hotel where I’d registered under an alias, take a cab to the airport, and return to the big city fifteen grand richer.

Doty came from his hotel at the expected time. In the mouth of the alley, I listened to his footsteps on the dark street.

When he came abreast of the alley, I said, “Doty.”

He stopped.

“Come here,” I said, “I want to talk to you.” I let him glimpse the gun.

He began to shake. He looked around frantically.

I pushed him twenty feet into the alley. He pleaded for his life.

The sound of the gun was a balloon popping. Doty’s knees gave way, and he fell dead.

At that moment, the witness had screamed, long and loud as only a frizzy-headed blonde, in cheap clothes and makeup, can scream. She and her boy friend had decided on the alley as a short cut from one of the amusement places on the parallel street to the tenement where she lived.

Her boy friend was having none of it. He took off on the instant. The girl was right behind him, but just the same she’d glimpsed my face.

Two more balloons had popped in the alley, but in the darkness the shooting was bad. I’d missed her. Then I’d violated another Syndicate rule. I’d panicked — run straight out of the alley almost into the arms of a beat cop who’d heard the screams and was charging up for a look-see.

The cop was no sitting duck. He was big and fast — and armed.

I dropped the silenced pistol and held both my hands up as high as they’d go.

The Syndicate of course had never heard of me. I’d put myself out on the limb. Still, I had dough to hire Cyril Abbott. First day he’d come to jail to see me, he’d asked how much the job had paid. I’d had sense enough to say ten grand. He’d taken the whole ten and told me not to worry.

It was like telling me not to breathe. Maybe a lawyer as foxy as Abbott could cast some doubt on the blonde’s testimony. After all, the alley had been pretty dark. I’d faced the street glow only briefly. And everything had happened awfully fast.

The big question — to me — was whether or not this overbearing old lady Clevenger qualified to sit on the jury.

The D. A. buttered her up with those boyish, friendly brown eyes. “Your name please?”

“Mrs. Clarissa Butterworth Clevenger.”

“You’re an American citizen?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have any moral or religious convictions against capital punishment which would disqualify you to sit on a jury in a capital case in this state?”

“None whatever, young man.”

I reached for a handkerchief to wipe my face. In my mind I reviewed what little I’d heard of Mrs. Clarissa Butterworth Clevenger. She had lived here twenty years, meeting and marrying one of the town’s leading citizens when he was on a Florida vacation. Abbott had mentioned that she’d been boldly, strikingly beautiful in those days, before time, luxury, and her inner self broadened the beam and altered the surface. Her husband had been fifteen years her senior. Three years ago he’d died in a private hospital after a long illness.

The D. A. gave her a considerate smile that silently said he disliked putting a lady of her position through a nonsensical routine. “Do you have any opinions already formed regarding this case, Mrs. Clevenger?”

“None.”

“Do you know the defendant, Max Taylor?”

She looked down her nose at the D. A. “Hardly.”

“Of course. But this is all necessary, Mrs. Clevenger.”

“I quite understand. Get on with it, young man.”

“I think we need go no further,” the D. A. said. He turned toward the judge. “Your Honor, we find the juror acceptable.”

The judge nodded. “Counsel for the defense may question the juror.”

Cyril Abbott shuffled a few steps toward the Bench. He stood with that country bumpkin slump and scratched his gray tangle. “Your Honor, I guess the District Attorney has asked the important questions. I don’t see any grounds for disqualification of the juror. The Defense accepts her.”

I stared at Abbott’s slouching back for a moment. Then I sagged in my chair and let a hard-held breath break from my lungs.

As Abbott turned to face me. I’m sure he controlled an urge to wink. For a second I was almost sorry I’d lied to him, hadn’t given him the whole fifteen grand.

I don’t know what Mrs. Clevenger was before she married old man Clevenger, when she made that trip to a dazzling vacation land in a tropical clime. I don’t know what Len Doty had on her when he came looming out of her past. It must have been plenty to cause her to spend a young fortune seeking out a trustworthy name — my name — and making the arrangements to get rid of him.

I’d never know that part of it, and I didn’t care. I did know that there was only one thing she could do now, if she didn’t want me singing my head off.

I knew how great it was going to be, getting back to the city and telling the boys how I’d been tried with my own client on the jury.