This Game of Murder

Chapter XI

On Wednesday morning Marshall stopped by to see Chief Meister. The state police crime lab had reported that the rope fragment found on the roof had definitely come from the coil in the garage, the chief said, and the district attorney was ready to move. He showed Marshall a warrant for Betty’s arrest on a charge of first-degree homicide and told him it would be served immediately after the funeral.

A preliminary hearing was set for nine o’clock the next morning.

Marshall contemplated phoning Betty to warn her what was in store for her, then decided against it. A warning would accomplish nothing, but it would upset her during the funeral, and as long as the arrest was inevitable anyway, he saw no point in making her brood about it before it took place. Instead, when he left police headquarters, he dropped in at Henry Quillan’s law office. He found the lawyer alone.

“Did you know Betty is going to be arrested right after the funeral?” he asked Quillan.

The lawyer nodded. “Arn Ross told me. He’s really quite co-operative until he gets into court.”

“Does Betty know?”

Quillan shook his head. “I see no point in informing her. There’s nothing she could do about it except worry. I’ll be at the funeral, of course, so I’ll be present at the arrest. Everything’s under control.”

Marshall felt a little better.

Returning to the newspaper, he went into conference with his father. For once they agreed on a matter of policy.

“I don’t see how we can avoid printing the story now,” Marshall said. “It’s going to be a matter of public record.”

“We’d be criticized for suppressing news in order to protect an influential person,” Jonas agreed. “There’s no point in letting the Buffalo papers scoop us either. What time’s the funeral?”

“One p.m.”

“Then it should be over by two. Write up the story in advance so we can lock the forms at deadline time. Then we’ll hold the run of the front page until the arrest is actually made. You can phone in the minute it’s definite and we’ll be on the street a half-hour later.”

As the reporter started to leave the office, his father said, “Son.”

Marshall turned at the doorway. “Yes?”

“Never mind,” Jonas said. “I was going to tell you to make it as easy on her as possible, but I guess you will without instructions.”

By noon Marshall had the story on his father’s desk. He made it a straightforward account, with no suggestion of bias either toward Betty’s guilt or innocence. It began:

From there the story tapered off to a biographical sketch of Betty, including her locally prominent ancestry. It concluded with a brief mention that she and Bruce had been married eleven years and had a ten-year-old son.

The story covered everything the reading public would expect, he felt, yet avoided any hint of sensationalism. It was one of the hardest things he ever wrote, simple as it was, but he was satisfied with it when he finished. He knew it wouldn’t help Betty’s case, but he was sure it wouldn’t hurt her either.

He got to the funeral parlor a little before one p.m. and took a seat in the rear. Betty was already seated in the front row between the Reeds, and Henry Quillan sat next to George Reed.

There was no sign of young Bruce, Jr., Marshall was glad to note. Apparently Betty felt as he did about children being dragged to funerals, even the funeral of a parent. In this case it would have been additionally cruel to make the boy witness the arrest of his mother.

Chief Barney Meister was also in the audience.

When the ceremony was over, Betty came up the aisle on the arm of George Reed. She wasn’t collapsed against him in the manner most new widows leave a funeral. Her fingers only lightly clasped his elbow, her back was erect and her chin up. Her face was pale, but the clearness of her eyes showed that she had not allowed herself the hypocrisy of tears. She swept by with the air of a princess ignoring the hostile glares of a rebellious peasantry.

Marshall slipped out immediately behind Henry Quillan and Audrey Reed, reaching the porch in time to see George Reed help Betty into the rear seat of the first car parked behind the hearse. Reed rounded the car to slide beneath the wheel as Quillan helped Audrey into the rear next to Betty, then climbed in front himself.

Marshall didn’t go to the cemetery in the funeral cortege; instead he drove there in his own car and parked outside the gate. When the last of the funeral procession had passed through the gate, he saw that Barney Meister hadn’t ridden in one of the cars either. He came along in a police car driven by a uniformed officer. It turned into the cemetery grounds.

The ceremony here was very brief. Fifteen minutes after the funeral procession drove in, cars began to leave. Glancing at his watch, Marshall saw it was only five of two.

When the family car in which Betty had ridden appeared, only the Reeds were in it. Both looked upset. The car turned in the direction of town.

The police car came out last. Henry Quillan sat next to the uniformed driver and Betty was in back with Barney Meister.

Marshall followed the car to police headquarters and waited until the occupants had gone inside. Then he pulled into a filling station across the street to use the phone.

It wasn’t that he had expected anything to happen which would void the story he had written, such as a break attempt by Betty. But a good newspaperman doesn’t allow a story to go to press until he’s sure that what he has written has actually occurred. There could have been a collision on the way to headquarters. Betty might have collapsed and had to be rushed to a hospital. When you write a story in advance based on a presumption of what is going to happen, you have to follow up to make sure it has happened the way you wrote it.

He dropped a coin, dialed the newspaper and asked for his father’s office.

When Jonas answered, he said, “You can let it roll.”

It was just two fifteen p.m., forty-five minutes after deadline. But everything but the front page had been printed, Marshall knew. The issue wouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes late.

The Runyon City News deliberately withheld the story of Betty’s arrest from the wire services. But big-city papers customarily subscribed to all nearby local papers because smaller-town papers sometimes miss the newsworthiness of big stories. Buffalo was the closest big city, and Erie, Pennsylvania, was the next closest in the opposite direction. Both Buffalo papers and the one in Erie subscribed to the Runyon City News, so all three were aware of the arrest by that evening.

As the case had promise of developing into a sensational murder trial, with a beautiful, wealthy and socially prominent woman as the defendant, all three papers sent reporters to cover the hearing. News coverage from that point on was now beyond the control of the local paper.

City Judge Homer Gandy, a lean, bald-headed man of only about thirty-five presided. Betty, in a dark, conservative street dress, sat at the defense table with Henry Quillan. Arnold Ross was alone at the prosecution table.

Though this was only a preliminary hearing, the court room was so jammed with spectators that there were standees at the rear. Marshall spotted George and Audrey Reed in the center of the room and wondered who was taking care of Bud. He moved forward to take his usual seat in the press section.

At a preliminary hearing many of the usual courtroom formalities are waived, since it is not a trial. It’s purpose is merely to establish whether or not there is sufficient evidence to hold an accused person for the grand jury. There is no jury, and what it amounts to is that the prosecution attempts to convince the judge that there is sufficient evidence to warrant grand jury consideration of the charge; the defense attempts to convince him there isn’t and get the charge dismissed.

The first witness for the prosecution was Barney Meister. After being sworn in and establishing that he was Runyon City’s chief of police, he testified that about two-thirty a.m. the previous Monday morning he had been awakened at home by a call from police headquarters informing him that there had been a shooting at the old Runyon place at Rexford Bay. He explained that he had left standing instructions with the desk to inform him of important police matters, no matter what time it was.

“The desk man didn’t have any details,” he added. “He didn’t know who was shot and how bad, only that a woman had phoned in the report. I guess he assumed the matter should be classified as important more because of the address than the occurrence.”

Marshall didn’t consider the comment very funny, but there was a titter from the audience. Judge Gandy rapped his gavel.

The chief went on to explain that a police car had come by his home a few minutes later to drive him to the scene. There he had found Bruce Case lying dead of a gunshot wound, half in and half out of his wife’s bedroom door. He related what Betty had told him to how the shooting occurred.

There was no objection from Henry Quillan to this as hearsay. Marshall guessed that the lawyer was glad to have it in the record, as it might save him from putting Betty on the stand at all, in case he decided not to.

Meister continued by describing his examination of the premises, with the help of Patrolman Nat Thorpe, his taking of the cut-out portion of the screen and his later visit after daylight to find the fragment of rope tied to the air-vent pipe on the roof. He went on to tell of receiving the crime lab report the next day that the screen had been cut from the inside.

“Objection,” Quillan said. “Hearsay.”

The district attorney said, “Your Honor, we intend to put Harold Farroway of the state police crime lab on the stand later, at which time the contents of this report will be verified by the man who made it. We can temporarily dismiss this witness and put Farroway on now, if you wish, but to save time I’d like to continue with the stipulation that we’ll establish the report later.”

The judge glanced at Quillan, who said, “All right, Your Honor, exception in the event the prosecution fails to establish it.”

“Go ahead,” the judge said to Ross.

“Continue your story, Chief,” Ross said.

Meister had little left to tell. He described his return to Betty’s home after reading the lab report and his finding of the coil of rope in the garage.

“A later lab examination showed the fragment found on the roof had been cut from this coil,” he concluded.

“Same exception, Your Honor,” Quillan said.

Arnold Ross turned the witness over for cross-examination.

Rising to his feet, the defense attorney approached the witness stand. “Chief Meister, did you make any attempt to establish the ownership of the coil of rope you found in the garage?”

Meister looked puzzled. “It was in the Case garage. It must have belonged to Mr. Case.”

“I’m not asking for an assumption. Did you trace down where it had been sold and to whom?”

“Of course not. Why should I?”

“Then you really don’t know if it belonged to anyone living in the Case home, do you?”

“I know it was in their garage.”

“But you have no idea who put it there, or when. Is that right?”

“I suppose.”

Quillan said, “You have testified that you searched the inside of the house and the garage. Did you also make a search of the grounds at any time?”

Meister looked puzzled. “For what?”

“For clues. Did you, for example, look behind any of the shrubbery which hugs all four sides of the house?”

“No.”

“Then isn’t it quite possible that a length of rope dropped from the roof might have fallen behind some of that shrubbery and have been lying there all day Monday?”

“Objection,” Arnold Ross said. “He’s asking witness for a conclusion.”

“I withdraw the question,” Quillan said before the judge could rule. “Did you ask anyone in the Case household if they had found a length of rope behind some shrubbery, coiled it up and put it in the garage?”

“Objection!” Ross called.

“On what grounds?” the judge asked. “It seems a reasonable enough question to me.”

Ross subsided and Quillan repeated the question. “No,” Barney Meister said.

“That’s all,” the defense attorney said. “You may step down.”