Weak Flesh (37 page)

“Your only niece.”  She laughed as she corrected him, but hoped her uncle didn’t regret his generous offer of making her a partner in the newspaper.

“Yes, yes.”  A thoughtful cast passed over his face before he sat forward on the edge of his chair. “This trial business, Emma, that’s what I’ve come about.”

“Alma Bentley’s murder trial?  What about it?”

“I attended the arraignment.”

Emma couldn’t keep the bewilderment from her voice. “Why?”

Her uncle shifted awkwardly in his chair, a sure sign he intended to chastise her. He crossed his legs at the knees, his Homburg bouncing gently on his thigh. “I rather expected to see you there.”

Emma carefully monitored her tone. “Since Miss Bentley admitted her guilt to me in our interview, I – I believed little purpose could be served by attending the arraignment.”

Stephen reached across the desk to lift her chin. “Emma, there’s no right or wrong in this business.”  He sighed noisily. “It’s a matter of good and better decisions.”

“And I made the less good decision,” she muttered.

“Perhaps, perhaps not.”  He paused. “Surprisingly, Alma Bentley pled not guilty at the arraignment. Now that news makes a good newspaper article.”

“What?  Not guilty?  But she is guilty!  She confessed.”

Suddenly warm in the small room, Emma jumped up and removed her jacket. She walked to the back door and propped it ajar to capture a breeze from the alley. “I printed her admission.” 

“As you should have. Her confession was news that you were obliged to report. And covering her retraction is good reporting too.”

Doubt filled Emma’s mind as she recalled the details of the interview last week. Had she wrangled a confession out of the woman?  “I didn’t ask permission of her attorney.”

Stephen’s hand sliced through the air. “Doesn’t matter. Miss Bentley shouldn’t have spoken to you. But, in a moment of egregious misjudgment, she did.”

“Still ... ” she began, but stopped abruptly and merely handed her uncle the letter from Mr. Rivers.

“Malachi Rivers, Miss Bentley’s attorney.”  He rubbed his chin slowly as he read the remaining lines. “Hmmmm, pretty harsh.”  He placed the letter on her desk. “You must expect such unpleasantries in this business, Emma.”  He paused a moment. “Speaking of which, my brother won’t be pleased about this,” he warned.

Emma wrinkled her nose. “Papa approves of very few of my activities.”

Stephen shook his head sadly. “This public controversy is just the kind of notoriety your father and mother abhor.”

Emma covered the distance between them, bent to wrap her arms around him, and dropped another kiss on his cheek. “Poor Uncle Stephen, Papa’s never quite forgiven you for being rich and famous without benefit of the Knight fortune.”

He gave her a pensive gaze. “You are quite like my mother, Emma, a woman far ahead of her time. And nothing like your father. Franklin always seems to have a stick up his . . . Well, never mind about that.”  He laughed, slapping his thighs decisively and reaching for his walking stick.

His parting words cheered Emma’s spirits more than anything else. “You did the right thing to print the interview, m’dear. As a newspaper woman, you could do no less.”

#

In the evening after the arraignment, Malachi climbed the hill above his small cabin. At the summit he looked at the sight below, one that never failed to send a thrill of pleasure through him. His own land, however small, his own home built with the sweat of his own labor.

The woodsy smell of damp nettles and decaying logs wafted from downwind and he could sense the moisture that blew off the lake at his back. The silence was broken only by the crush of his boots and the susurration of insects.

An hour after finishing a modest dinner prepared on the open flame of the fireplace, Malachi pumped water to soak the dishes. He poured coffee and moved to the front porch where his mother’s rocking chair – the only piece of decent furniture his father hadn’t smashed in a drunken rage years ago – sat like a huge, over-sized gargoyle, its long runners jutting dangerously.

The rocker was his favorite spot to meditate.

As sunset gradually darkened the clearing around his home, he stared into the dense forest and spied a smoky trail in the sky above the tree line. A new owner taken up residence at the old Chester homestead, he figured. Malachi cherished his privacy and the small estate lying a scant four miles to the east of his shack was too close for his satisfaction.

When the night turned inky, he went inside and sat at the oak-hewn table he had fashioned from the trees surrounding the property. Opening a portfolio, he perused his hand-written notes on the Alma Bentley trial.

Opening remarks were scheduled for tomorrow, first the prosecution’s and then his own. Alma’s case would require all his skill as an attorney. He hoped he could extricate her from the Gordian knot of treachery and murder she’d woven for herself.

Premeditated murder, with malice aforethought.

“It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” –
Othello

Chapter 2

Noise in the small courtroom rose to a distracting buzz as latecomers straggled down the aisle one by one. Men garbed in work clothes and those dressed in fashionable morning coats jockeyed for seats in the limited space. Soon they packed the gallery, some hatless, others jauntily angling the latest Homburgs or bowler hats on their heads.

No more than four or five women were scattered among the men – the mother of the victim, of course, dark and heavy in her mourning clothes. The sister of the victim languished beside her mother, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Few other females beyond the defendant were in attendance. After all, this trial would address delicate issues of fornication, betrayal, and murder, not proper fodder for a lady’s mind or conversation.

Unlike the other attorneys, Malachi refused to scrutinize the gallery. The various inhabitants of the courtroom weren’t his primary concern. Rather, he focused on the two rows of gentlemen who lined the jury seats to the right.

Twelve pairs of eyes stared down at his client from their raised dais. Glittering eyes that seemed to rake over the poor quality of Alma’s gray gabardine suit and the plain straw of her bonnet. They were taking in the whole of her, assessing her value much as they’d judge a heifer on the auction block.

They alone were Malachi’s concern because they alone would decide his client’s fate.

A moment later the bailiff called the session to order and the audience settled into an excited hum of expectation. After the magistrate’s charge to the jury and a strict admonition to the audience about proper conduct in the courtroom, the district attorney presented his opening statement to the jury.

Fulton sauntered to his feet, hands gripping the lapels of his coat. Malachi braced himself. He fully expected the prosecution to titillate and inflame the jury by wrenching every sordid detail out of the tale of Joseph Machado’s murder at the hands of his erstwhile lover, Alma Bentley.

Malachi’s eyes wandered to the pews directly behind the wooden railing that separated the attorneys’ table from the area assigned to reporters. Two men occupied the first bench. He looked behind them to the second row.

A newcomer sat in the center of that pew, her auburn hair a flaming messy affair scarcely contained beneath a wide-brimmed hat. No doubt, Emma Knight, the newspaper woman. Wedged between James Spencer from The Sacramento Union and Harold Belcher from The San Francisco Chronicle, she held a pad and pencil as her fingers poised to take notes.

At that moment she lifted her head and met his scrutiny. He blinked back at eyes that were a deep chocolate, as dark as the fine Ghirardelli confections he’d once tasted in San Francisco. Dusty pink spots flushed her cheeks even as she tilted her chin in an unmistakable challenge and returned his stare without faltering.

The sound of Fulton’s voice drew Malachi’s attention and he turned toward the front where the district attorney began his opening remarks.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” Fulton began, facing them and eyeing each juror in turn, “the state thanks you for the service you render this court today, which service is one of the highest performances a true patriot can give.”

Malachi shook his head, but refrained from shooting a glance heavenward, as he contemplated the pomposity that was the state, embodied in the compact figure of Charlie Fulton. He steadied himself for a long-winded speech.

“The prosecution will show,” the district attorney  continued, “irrefutably and indisputably that Alma Bentley, a lowly maid in the household of Joseph and Frances Machado, did willfully and with premeditation strap a pistol to her ankle, stride to the Machado home on Fort Sutter Road, and deliberately shoot Joseph Machado, Junior.” 

He raised his right arm and pointed his finger in imitation of taking the lethal shot. “As young Joe lay bleeding and dying on the floor, Miss Bentley calmly shot him again. This time directly into his heart.”

Malachi felt his client jerk beside him.

Fulton lowered his mock pistol to the floor and stared down, pausing dramatically as if the pathetic body lay at his feet. “I will show that Alma did so out of revenge. Joe had spurned her attentions and demonstrated interest in another woman. Motivated by jealousy and uncontrolled rage, the accused decided if she could not have Joe, then no one should.”

Malachi glanced at Alma. Her face was a slab of stone. Her hands gripped the table top.

“Alma Bentley committed cold-blooded murder in the grip of the green-eyed monster,” Fulton continued. “Yes, gentlemen, a monster had her in its clutches, but it was a monster she welcomed into her bosom.”

Malachi touched Alma’s shoulder, but she stared straight ahead, her eyes unblinking, her mouth set. “Are you all right?” he whispered. She said nothing, so he patted her hand and turned back to Fulton’s litany.

In elaborate detail the prosecution delineated the evidence he intended to produce and the witnesses he would call to testify for the state. In a rare gesture of patience and latitude, Judge Underwood allowed Fulton to pontificate without interruption. Malachi glanced at the jury box where most of the occupants’ eyes had begun to glaze over.

Ninety minutes later, the prosecutor began to end his opening remarks. “Finally,” he stated, “I will show without a single doubt that Alma Bentley, and she alone, committed this heinous crime.”

When Fulton sat down with a flourish, the judge allowed several ponderous moments to lapse before he harrumphed and removed the sodden cigar from between his teeth. “Mr. Rivers?”

Malachi stood. “Your Honor, the defense wishes to delay its opening remarks to a later time.”

A gentle sigh blew throughout the courtroom. As Malachi suspected, he wasn’t the only one made restless by the prosecution’s lengthy remarks. He thought he saw a glimmer of relief in the magistrate’s eye as well.

Judge Underwood clapped his hands decisively. “Then we’ll take a luncheon break and reconvene at two o’clock this afternoon. Court adjourned.” 

With a pounding of his gavel and another swishing of his robes, the judge left through the same door he’d entered.

#

Emma remained on the hard wooden pew long after the other reporters, attorneys, and onlookers had vacated the courtroom. She hadn’t the slightest intention of leaving until she felt composed. Scrupulously honest with herself, she freely admitted that the single meeting of the eyes with Mr. Rivers across the courtroom had thrown her off guard.

She ought to be furious with him.  His response to her newspaper article was insolent, but as Stephen had pointed out, she was merely performing her job in reporting the news. Perhaps he also was merely doing his duty by his client. Still, he needn’t have been so acrimonious. And sanctimonious.

However, he was quite impressive in person, tall and broad-shouldered with a longish crop of dark brown hair. But he puzzled her. Although he appeared decisive and self-assured, his trial tactics seemed unconventional. At times he showed kindness and consideration toward his client, but at others displayed an almost cavalier attitude toward the proceedings.

The district attorney had spoken at some length, but Mr. Rivers asked only to delay his opening remarks. Was that the usual procedure?  Emma understood little about trial protocol, but shouldn’t he have said something about his client’s innocence or circumstances?  Ought he not to have presented a brief summary in her defense?

Frustrated, Emma frowned and gazed down at the sparse notes she’d scribbled in her notebook. She must be more diligent in her note taking even though she had little notion of how to go about covering the events of a trial.  

She had carefully perused the jurors and gallery during the court proceedings. In the jury section the twelve men had sat upright and powerful looking on the edge of the bench that ran the length of the southern wall of the courtroom.

All men!

How could Alma Bentley receive the benefit of a fair trial when her sex wasn’t represented? When no woman could sit on a jury?  Her civics classes at Wellesley had ingrained the idea of one being judged by a jury of his peers, but where were Alma Bentley’s peers on the jury panel?

#

Moments after the court recessed, Malachi isolated himself from the crowd. A few court attendees had brought picnic lunches now spread on blankets arranged colorfully around the sloping hill. Some of the men strolled toward the tavern on Main Street across from where Malachi maintained his law office. Others wandered to Mary Belle’s Teahouse, where the women in the gallery were eager to share the morning’s events with their friends whose husbands had forbad their wives to observe the trial.

At that moment the red-haired woman Malachi presumed was Emma Knight strode toward him as if she’d take on Beelzebub himself if he got in her way.

“Mr. Rivers?”  The woman stopped abruptly and glared up at him, no small feat, for she was an uncommonly tall woman. “Mr. Malachi Rivers?”

He glanced at his pocket watch and ignored the impulse to ask what the devil she wanted. Flies and honey, he reminded himself, as the woman drew near. “Please, call me Malachi,” he said pleasantly.