And on the Eighth Day (16 page)

“He committed a
sin
,” the Miller repeated, knuckling his head.

“Thank you,” said Ellery, and the big man went heavily back to his place. “Waterman?”

The Waterman rose and came forward. He was tall and young and sleek and graceful, walking with a glide; but his chief feature was wetness. His clothing showed more damp than dry, and his darkly bearded face and quick brown hands shone with moisture in the candlelight. He made Ellery think of a salamander.

“Yesterday afternoon,” the Waterman answered Ellery’s question, “I set out to clean the well across from the holy house. While I was in the well I heard the bell outside the holy house ring, and I started to climb up to ask whoever it was to lend me a hand in hauling up the bucket. But I slipped, and this made me slow. I heard the bellringer—I suppose now it must have been the Miller—I heard him go away. Then I heard someone else coming. I lifted my head above the housing of the well, and I saw …” He stopped to wipe his slick forehead with his slick hand.

“And you saw what, Waterman?” Ellery asked.

“It is as the Miller said. I saw Storicai go into the holy house. He did not ring the bell. He was not admitted by the Teacher.”

Ellery glanced at the patriarch. The old man might have been alone in the long room, wrapped in an impenetrable silence. A great calm covered his face; his eyes, burning in the reflected light of the many candles, seemed fixed on something far away, a vision to which the stone walls of the holy house were no impediment.

Ellery felt the stirring of wonder. It was as if the Teacher did not care. Could he actually be indifferent to the purpose of this unprecedented proceeding? Or was it resignation?

“Waterman, what was the time when you observed Storicai enter the Holy Congregation House unlawfully?”

“It was about a quarter past the hour of four, Guest.”

“Do you say this because that was the time fixed by the Miller, or because you knew of your own knowledge?”

“I knew of my own knowledge,” the Waterman said quietly, “from the slant of the shadow made by the sun in the well.”

“You may return to your place, Waterman.” Ellery waited until the tall salamander had glided back to his seat on the bench. Then he addressed the motionless figures around the table. “It will be seen, then, that the Storesman is placed at the scene of his killing, by the testimony of the Miller and the Waterman, at a quarter past the hour of four. How long after he entered the holy house was he killed? Five minutes. This I know because the Storesman was wearing on his wrist a timepiece belonging to me, which I had lent him for the duration of my visit to Quenan. This timepiece, called a wrist watch, was broken by a blow of the hammer during the killing as Storicai flung up his hand to protect himself.”

He took the wrist watch out of his pocket and held it up. “As you see, the hands stopped at twenty minutes past the hour of four—as I said, five minutes after the Storesman entered the holy house.”

When he was satisfied that all had seen the position of the hands, he pocketed the watch and said, “I summon the Growther.”

The Growther, or Grower, was middle-age. He was long in the body, like a cornstalk; and the skin under his fingernails was black from lifelong rooting in the earth. He spoke haltingly, in an eerie voice, as a plant might speak if it could be taught words.

Yesterday afternoon, the Growther said, he had visited the sick Slave. He had been with the Slave a quarter of an hour, praying with him and telling him of the crops. He had left the Slave’s house when the Teacher arrived. He knew that the time he had come was three o’clock and the time he had left was a quarter past three because of the clock in the Slave’s house.

And the Growther said, “Did you know, Guest, that inside the Slave’s clock lives a little bird? At one time the bird would come out and call the hours. But it has not called the hours for a very long time.”

“I did not know that, Growther,” said Ellery gravely. “Thank you. And now, will the Herder come forward?”

The Herder was a knotty oldster with a great spreading beard. He squinted from under his bird’s-nest brows as if into the sun; his skin was like the skin of a long-dried apricot. Try as Ellery would, he got nothing out of the whiskered mouth but bleats and grunts.

“What did you do yesterday afternoon, Herder?”

Bleat.

“Did you not visit the Slave’s house?”

Grunt
, accompanied by a nod.

“When did you step into the Slave’s house?”

Grunt.

“Did you get there at four o’clock, or later?”

Bleat
, untranslatable.

“Oh, all right,” said Ellery. “Yesterday I understood you to say that you got there a bit before a quarter past four. Is that so?”

Nod.

“You found the Teacher there when you arrived?”

Nod.

“And the Teacher left the Slave’s house at your coming?”

Nod.

“Immediately at your coming?”

Grunt, bleat,
nod-nod.

“Thank you, that will be all.” Ellery turned to the Teacher. “Can the Slave be brought here now?”

He saw now that, for all his distant look, the patriarch was attending the proceedings. For he nodded at once to the Successor, who hurried from the holy house. They must have had the Slave all ready to be brought in, because the door opened again a bare two minutes later to reveal the young Successor, sweating. He said something, and the Miller and the Waterman rose at once and stepped outside. They returned immediately carrying the Slave. Someone—perhaps the Carpentersmith—had rigged up a sort of reclining chair to which had been fixed two poles, making a Crude palanquin; and in it half lay the ailing man.

The Successor swiftly indicated the spot near the foot of the table where the litter should be set down; the Miller and the Waterman set it down precisely there; then all three returned to their places.

The Slave looked as old as the Teacher was but did not look. He looked like the southwestern hills—black-brown-red of skin with dry gullies for wrinkles over a skeleton of calcified bones, moribund as the desert itself. Only the Slave’s eyes were alive—shining-black as a bird’s eyes, and as unwinking. And this Slave, who was no longer slave, had the massive dignity of his blood; yes, and curiosity, too. The bird’s eyes took in everything before they settled on Ellery’s face.

“I thank you,” said his echo of a voice; and Ellery knew that the whispering tones were giving him thanks for having him brought to the Holy Congregation House for his last Crownsil meeting. “And now I am ready.”

“I will not tire you”—he had started to say “Slave,” but the word had stuck in his throat—“for my questions are few,” and Ellery quickly drew from the ancient man the story of his visitors of the day before, and conflation of the times they had arrived at and departed from his house—the Growther, the Teacher, the Herder.

“Only one thing more,” Ellery said gently. “You are ill, and you have had to lie in your bed. How can you have noted and remembered the times so exactly?”

It seemed to him that the smallest smile curved the withered lips. “There is so little time left to me,” said the old Slave, “that I observe time as a young man observes his enemy.”

“I need question you no further. And now if you wish to be taken back to your house—”

The ancient whispered, “I should like to remain,” and glanced at the Teacher; and a look passed between them so intimate, so full of anguish and compassion that Ellery had to turn away.

And to the Crownsil he said, “And so we come to the Teacher’s alibi.”

“Al-i-bi?” repeated someone; and Ellery saw that it was the Superintendent. “This is not a word we have ever heard, Guest.” And Ellery saw, from their faces, that it was so.

He explained it in the simplest terms he could evoke; and when he knew that they understood, he went on.

“We must therefore hold,” Ellery said, “that the Teacher’s alibi ended when he stepped out of the—of the Slave’s house, which was at fifteen minutes past four o’clock. It is only a few steps from the Slave’s house to the Holy Congregation House; had the Teacher returned here from the Slave’s house at once, he would have had to arrive just before twenty minutes past four, the time that the Storesman was struck down to his death. I have questioned everyone. No one remembers having seen the Teacher in the five minutes between fifteen and twenty minutes past four.”

He did not look at the Teacher now.

“If anyone in this company now remembers having seen the Teacher, or has heard of another’s having seen the Teacher, he must say so now.”

And stopped. And waited. In the long room, no sound. Outside, no sound. In himself, no sound except the terrible beating of his heart.

He felt a tickle on his nose, descending; and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his streaming forehead. “It is thus established,” Ellery said, “that the Teacher could have been here—in this room—on the scene of the slaying—at twenty minutes past four, the very moment that Storicai the Storesman was dealt the mortal blow.”

No one coughed, shifted, snuffled, slewed about. They were turned to stone. What are you saying? their stone faces seemed to ask. What is your meaning? Because meaning your words must have, though to us they mean nothing.

It was as if the entire weight of the matter had been shifted to Ellery’s shoulders. No one of them would help to move it from there one inch to the right or to the left, except as he might wrench their testimony from them.

So there was nothing to do but turn to the source.

To the Teacher, Ellery said painfully, “Teacher, did you go directly from the Slave’s house to this holy house yesterday?”

And the old man’s eyes came back from the far place and looked at him; and he said calmly, “It is so, Quenan.”

Now was there something heard in that room, a many-lunged sigh, of which one part was his own. Ellery said, “And were you then already in the holy house
before
Storicai was slain with the hammer?”

“It is so, Quenan.”

And again the assembled sigh.

Ellery knew light-headedness. He pressed his palms on the long table, leaning. How theatrical this all was, how pompously unnecessary. Why had he called upon the trappings of interrogation, Crownsil, witnesses, the whole dismal reconstruction of the timetable of the Teacher’s movements? When all he had had to do was ask the patriarch the simple question,
Did you kill Storicai, Teacher?
to get the truthful answer. The Teacher did not lie. The Teacher would not lie.

Ellery actually turned to the old man and opened his mouth before reason took control again. Whatever the cause—the other-worldliness of the place, the strangeness of the people, his own enervation, the headiness of the encroaching desert—he had hardly been the same man since setting foot here. A case that rested solely on an accused’s bearing witness against himself was not a civilized proceeding; it was an inquisition. This was not a matter between Teacher and Guest, a duel of antagonists. This was a searching after truth. For what is truth?
If you will be persuaded by me, pay little attention to Socrates, but much more to the truth, and if I appear to you to say anything true, assent to it, but if not, oppose me with all your might, taking good care that in my zeal I do not deceive both myself and you, and like a bee depart, leaving my sting behind.
And then there were the Crownsil and the people to persuade. Truth might touch their hearts through faith; but in such a dreadful matter it must convince their minds as well, and that could only come through evidence.

Ellery looked away from the Teacher to the faces around the table.

“Storicai is established as having entered this holy house at fifteen minutes past four. He is established as having been struck down to his death at twenty minutes past four. And the Teacher is established as having been here between Storicai’s entering and Storicai’s dying. And these two things establish that the Teacher had the
opportunity
to commit the crime. But not these two things alone establish his opportunity. There is another thing to support them.”

From his pocket he took the glassine envelope containing the metal button he had found in Storicai’s hand. “This button I removed from the Storesman’s dead hand,” he said. “I shall pass it among you, so that you may look at it closely, and know it for what it is.” And he handed it to the Superintendent, who took it and passed it to the Successor as if it burned; and Ellery watched the button go around the table, quickly, leaving pain behind it.

And when it had been returned to him, Ellery said, “The very presence of this metal button in the slain man’s hand is witness to its meaning. The threads still clinging to it are witness that it was torn away by Storicai, from the garment to which it was sewn, during the struggle that cost the Storesman his life … torn away from the garment of the person with whom he was struggling—who else?”

And Ellery said, sickening himself as he said it, “And this places the owner of the button on the scene of the slaying at the very moment of its taking place. And who, alone in Quenan, wears metal buttons on his garments? And who, in fact, had a metal button replaced on his garment?”

Someone made a stifled sound.

“I call the Weaver to witness.”

She came slowly, chin on her bosom; nor would she sit, but remained standing before the stool. Once more it was necessary for him to phrase the answer as well as the question: yes, she did sew a button, a new metal button with the sacred
N
upon it, on the Teacher’s robe at fifteen minutes before five o’clock—only twenty-five minutes after the murder. Her “yes” was torn from her. And she returned, with the step of an old woman, to her place.

Ellery felt his own legs trembling. He had to steel himself in order to turn to the Teacher.

“Do you then admit, Teacher, that this button found in Storicai’s dead hand came from your garment?”

And calmly the Teacher answered, “It is so.”

Ellery looked about, and he saw that he had company indeed in his distress. The stone had crumbled from their faces; each sat exposed in his knowledge and his grief.