Chapter 12
Forty Steps
He went back to the jury room at midnight, when the others were in bed.
He did it because he could not stay anywhere else. He lay for an hour on the sofa in the lounge, listening to Helen's breathing grow easier and Greg's grow louder, and watched a small crack in the ceiling. At a quarter to twelve he got up. He took the splinted ankle slowly, and went down the corridor with a hand on the wall.
The jury room was dark. He did not turn on the strip. There was enough light from the little screen, which was always lit, and glowed in the middle of the oak like a pond under the moon. He sat down in the head chair. It was cold. He put his hands on the table, one on each side of the white king, which somebody had stood up again, and looked at the ceiling.
The stain was just visible. It was a darker brown, in the gloom, the shape of a boot, and the toe pointed at the door.
It's the same, he thought. It's the very same.
It's grown.
He had looked at it for four days. He had looked at it, in the end, for seven hours at a time. In March nine years ago the stain had been the size of a dinner plate. It had been new, then, a pale yellow bloom on the plaster, and a juror had said that someone ought to tell the county about the pipe, and everyone had agreed, and no one had.
He shut his eyes.
He let it come.
The first day there was snow.
It was the sixth of March, a Monday. It was not the sort that lies, but the thin wet gray sort that falls and melts and falls again, and by ten in the morning the pavements were black with it. They'd come in with their umbrellas, twelve of them, in two lines, through a door at the back of the Annex. They had been sworn at nine. They had been shown to the jury room by a pink-faced young clerk with a clipboard, who told them where the washrooms were and how to get coffee, and not to talk about the case, and to ask for anything they needed.
Ask the bailiff, said the clerk. He'll bring it. Or ask the foreman, once you've got one.
They had looked at each other. They were a mixed lot. A plumber, a housewife, two teachers, a young man with a ring in his nose who worked at a record store, a retired postman, a nurse. A big gray man in a gray suit, who said he sold insurance. An elderly black woman in a hat, who said nothing at all. A youngish engineer with a beard. And Daniel.
He had been thirty-two. He had a new jacket, because Anna had said he must look nice, and she had been right, though she was in the hospital and could not see it. He had left her at seven that morning in a room with a window and a vase of daffodils. She had been awake. She had said, Go on. Don't be late. She had put a hand on his sleeve. Tell me everything.
Tell me who's the funniest.
He had said he would.
He could not now have said who was funny. He remembered only the long walk. It had been the first thing he noticed. They had been led from the jury room along a corridor, to the courtroom door, and the corridor was long and cold and tiled in black and white squares like a chessboard. The tiles rang under their feet. It was a good deal further than it looked. He had counted without meaning to, as a boy counts the cracks in a pavement.
Twenty. Twenty-one.
Forty.
Forty steps, from the jury room to the courtroom.
He had thought, Anna would like that. He had thought, I'll tell her. He had thought it again every morning, for four mornings, as the twelve of them filed down the black-and-white hall with their badges on their jackets and the gray light slanting across the floor. Forty steps. It was the only thing about the whole business that he had ever really enjoyed.
They had picked him, in the end, because he was on time.
That was what he told Tom. It was the truth. There had been the embarrassed pause in the jury room, in the first hour, with the radiator hissing. The insurance man had said, Well, we'll need a chairman. A woman had said, What do they call it? And from the far end of the table a voice had said, dryly and kindly, A foreman. It's an old word.
It was a woman in a green cardigan.
She had a gray pencil in her hair and a number nine on her lapel, in white plastic, pinned crooked. She looked sixty and was fifty-eight. She was small and brown and neat, with a face like a good apple, and a way of looking at a person as if she had all day. She had said her name when they went round. Margaret Hale. I teach mathematics. I taught it for thirty-one years. I'm taking a break. She had smiled. She had said, I won't pretend I'm not curious.
Hale, he thought now, in the dark. Her name was Hale.
It was the first time he had let himself say it. He said it very quietly, to the empty chair at the end of the table, and it did not do anything. It lay on the air for a moment, small and plain, like a dropped glove.
Margaret.
She had liked him. That was the thing. In the first two days, she had asked him questions. How are you finding it, Mr. Wells? You look tired. She had pushed the sugar toward him across the oak. She had said, once, in the lunch break, with her coffee in her hands, that her husband was in the gallery every day, taking notes. He's retired too, she said. He used to be a court reporter. He can't resist. She had laughed. He's under strict instructions not to look at us.
My wife's in the hospital, Daniel had said.
Oh, I'm sorry.
It's, she's, they don't know. It could be a week. It could be a month.
Do you have children?
A daughter. She's three.
What's her name?
June.
She had said it back. She had held it a moment, rolling it, with her pale eyes on his face, the way a teacher does with a new word. June. How lovely. That's the month we were married. She had patted his hand. You go home as soon as you can. We'll be quick. It's a clear case.
It was the last time she ever said that.
On the third day she asked for the index.
It was the thing he remembered best, and he could not have said why. It had been four o'clock. They had voted, twice, by show of hands, in the morning and again after lunch. Eleven to one. Eleven to one. They had gone round the table with their reasons. The blue paint. The dent in the wing. The witness, who'd seen a man at the wheel, in a lineup, and picked him out. The defendant, who had said he was at a chess tournament and could not prove it.
It's a pity, said the insurance man. A teacher. He seems a nice enough fellow. But the evidence is the evidence.
It's thin, said Margaret.
It's enough.
It's enough if we've seen everything. She had pulled a stapled sheet from her notebook, a list in her small square handwriting, and spread it on the oak. I've been going through the exhibits. There's an index. The clerk gave us a copy. It lists thirty-one pieces. We've been shown thirty. There's one that was, it's marked, but it's not in the box.
Which?
Fourteen.
She had run her pencil down the list. Marlow Chess Club, scoresheets, Round Four, the night in question. Defense exhibit. Marked for identification. She raised her eyes. It was marked and never introduced. Do you see? It's the one thing that would tell us where he was. It's got his moves on it, and the clock, and the times. If it's what he says it is, it'd be the end of the case.
It wasn't admitted, said someone.
That's why I'm asking. She said it very quietly. I think we're entitled to ask. A jury can send for an exhibit. We write to the judge, and the foreman signs, and the bailiff takes it. He'll say yes or he'll say no. But we'll have asked. She looked down the table. I'd like to ask.
It'll take all afternoon, said the insurance man.
It might.
We'd be here till Friday.
I imagine so.
I've got a, my mother's, I've got a thing on the weekend.
It's one sheet of paper, said Margaret Hale.
There was a silence, round the long oak table. They were all very tired. They were all looking at their hands. And down at the end, in the head chair, with a plastic cup of cold coffee and a telephone number he'd been told not to dial scribbled on the back of his hand, Daniel had felt a thing he did not recognize.
It was not guilt. That came later. It was a kind of pressure, behind the eyes, as though a shutter had come down.
Four more days, he had thought. If the judge sends for it. If he reconvenes. If they call the club owner. They'd have to bring him in. They'd have to read it out. We'd be a week.
She's got a week.
Maybe.
He had seen it, with a perfect, quiet, awful clarity. A room with a window, and a vase of daffodils, and a woman asleep. He had seen the chair beside the bed, with nobody in it. And he'd said, in his plain, courteous, reasonable foreman's voice, Let's think about whether it's necessary.
She wrote the note on the fourth morning.
It was a Thursday. The radiator was off. It had been broken since six, and the room was cold, and everybody wore their coats. She had come in early, before the rest, and was sitting at her place with her notebook open and a clean sheet of paper in front of her, and she looked up as he came in, and smiled.
Mr. Wells. I'd like to ask your help.
Of course.
I've written it. It's short. She held it out. If you'd sign the bottom, as foreman. I know it's irregular, to do it before the others come. But I'd rather it was done. I haven't slept.
He had taken it.
It was a sheet of plain white paper, torn from her notebook, with a ragged edge at the top. She had written it in pencil, in her square clear schoolteacher's hand, in four lines.
To the Court:
The jury respectfully requests that Exhibit 14 (Marlow Chess Club, scoresheets, Round Four) be sent to the jury room. We cannot be unanimous without it.
M. Hale (Juror 9)
He read it twice.
We cannot be unanimous without it.
He had known what it meant. He was not a stupid man. It meant that she would not vote guilty. It meant it was eleven to one, and would stay eleven to one, and the room would sit through every one of those long, flat, wet, endless hours until somebody gave in. It meant that if he did not take that sheet down the hall, she would go on asking.
Sign it? he said. Isn't it, shouldn't it be, I think we'd better ask the others.
I will. When they're here.
It's only that, it's early. I think we should wait.
Mr. Wells. She was looking at him. Her eyes were very pale, and very steady, and there was no anger in them. There was only a kind of grave, mild, patient curiosity, as there is in the eyes of a teacher who has asked a question of a child and is prepared to wait. May I ask you something?
Yes.
What's the matter?
He did not say.
He stood in the cold jury room with a piece of paper in his hand, in his good new jacket, with the gray light coming through the grimy window and the sound of rain, and felt something small and hard and cold come loose and go over inside him, like a stone off a cliff.
My wife, he had thought. My wife. My wife.
I could say it. I could tell her. She'd understand.
She'd say, of course, of course, you go home.
And she'd still hold out.
Because she's right.
He folded the paper.
He did it neatly. Once. Twice. He put it in the inside pocket of his jacket, over his heart, with a small flat motion, as a man puts away a ticket. He heard himself say, in his clear and even voice, I'll take it to the judge at the break.
Thank you, said Margaret.
I'll make sure he gets it.
That's very kind. She smiled. I do appreciate it.
"I never took it," said Daniel, aloud.
He said it to the empty room. It echoed, a little, off the paneling. In the middle of the table, the little screen glowed. He sat very still, with his hands on the oak, and the dark lay round him like warm water.
"I carried it for four hours. I took it out at lunch. I looked at it in the washroom. I thought, I'll give it to him after the break. And then there was a call, from the hospital, at one-ten. A nurse. Mr. Wells, she's asking for you. And I stood on the pay phone with the paper in my pocket and thought, if I send it now, there's a recess. If there's a recess, it's a day. If it's a day, I'm not there."
Nobody answered. There was no one in the room.
"I folded it again."
He was speaking calmly. He could not have said to whom.
"She asked me, after the break. In the jury room. She said, Did the judge answer? I said, Not yet. She said, Oh. She said, Would it help if I spoke to him myself?"
He swallowed.
"She meant it kindly. She'd been, I think she thought I was shy. She said, I don't mind. I'm used to it. I'll ask for a sidebar. And I stood there in front of eleven people. And I thought, if she asks him, he'll ask me."
He put the heels of both hands against his eyes.
"I went to Tom. I took him in the hall. And I said, I think Number Nine's been on her phone."
He had said it once. It had taken eleven words. He had looked at the big gentle man in the gray uniform, with his hand on his arm, and thought, coolly, Nobody will check. And nobody had.
He had been right.
They had sat down at four.
It was the same long oak table, and the same gray light. They had been twelve and were eleven. The woman in the green cardigan was gone, and in her place, on the end of the bench, sat a large pink man in a camel coat, who said he was sorry to be late, and he'd got there as fast as he could. He had said it twice. He'd looked round at them with a puzzled, apologetic smile, and nobody had told him a thing.
Shall we vote? said Daniel.
Why don't we, said the insurance man.
There had been a brief, businesslike murmur. Hands had gone up. Pencils scratched. He counted them, one by one, with a plain pen, in a plain flat voice. He was good at it. He had always been good at figures.
Twelve to nothing, he said.
He remembered the sound. It was not a cheer. It was like the sound of a long breath let out. Somebody laughed. Somebody put a hand over his face. A woman said, Thank God, loudly, and then, I'm sorry. The gray man in the camel coat stared at the table. And at the far end, where the radiator hissed, a man had risen and gone to the window and stood with his back to the room.
He had taken the form out of the folder. It was yellow, and printed, MC-J-417, in small black type at the bottom. He had signed it with a borrowed pen, standing up, with his coat on his arm. His hand had not shaken. It was a neat clear signature, with a long tail on the W, a young man's, in a hurry.
Foreman.
Dated March 9.
He had looked at his watch. It said twelve minutes past four.
Forty steps, he had thought, as they filed down the black-and-white hall to the courtroom to hear it read. Forty steps. I'll tell her.
I'll tell her about the tiles.
He had told her. That was the awful part. He had sat on the edge of the bed in the room with the daffodils, an hour later, still in his good jacket, with his tie loosened, and told her about the black-and-white hall. Forty steps. I counted. Every time. She had smiled, and her lips were dry and cracked. She had said, And was it a good jury? And he had said, It was fine. She said, Were they kind?
Yes, he had said. They were kind.
She had died on the Tuesday.
"Daniel."
He started.
He had not heard the door. He raised his head, and there was a figure standing in the gap of it, short and square, backlit by the strip in the corridor. He did not move. It was an old man, with iron-gray hair, in a gray shirt and no jacket, who stood with his big hands hanging and his face in shadow.
"Frank," he said.
"I couldn't sleep."
"No."
"I heard you talking."
"I'm sorry."
"No. Don't." The old man came in. He walked round the long oak table without a word and pulled out a chair, three places down, and sat on it heavily, as if his legs had given out. He did not look at Daniel. He put his forearms on the wood and looked at his own hands. "I wanted to say a thing. I'd like to say it to the table. I'd rather not look at you."
"All right."
"You asked, in the, you asked about the, what Ray said. About the lineup."
"Yes."
"I didn't touch his arm."
Daniel said nothing.
"That's what I told myself, for nine years. It's a very good story. I tell it well. I told it to a review board." Frank's voice was flat. "I said, I didn't lead him. I said, I only said take your time. I've said it so often that I could say it in my sleep." He drew a long breath. "I did touch his arm."
"I know."
"I did. I took it. Just above the elbow. And I said, take your time, Ray. And I squeezed. Like a, like you do for a, to steady a man. And he looked at me. And I knew he wasn't sure. I knew it from his face. And I thought, he'll get there."
"He picked number three."
"He picked the man I'd told him to."
"Did you know?"
"I knew it was the wrong thing to do." The old man's voice cracked. "I didn't know it was the wrong man. I thought he was guilty. I'd have sworn. He had the dent in the wing. He had no alibi. I'd done thirty years, and I'd got a nose for it, and I'd have sworn it on my mother's grave." He stopped. "I still would, God help me, if it weren't for this."
"For what?"
"For the sheet."
He said it so low that Daniel thought, for a second, he had not heard it.
"What sheet?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Frank."
"I said it doesn't matter." The old man had put both hands over his face. "I'm sorry. I was going to say. I can't. It's, it's my one. It's all I've got left." He took his hands away. His eyes were red and enormous. "Let me keep it till the end. I swear to you, I'll say it. Let me keep it."
"I won't ask."
"Thank you."
"I've got one too."
"I know you have."
They sat in the dark, the two of them, with the little screen glowing between them, and for a long time neither said a word. They were two men of nearly the same trade. They had each done a small thing, in a hurry, for a good reason, a long time ago. They had each been so sure that nobody would ever look.
"There's something else," said Frank, at last. "I didn't want to say it in front of the girl."
"What?"
"I checked on him. Lowe. After. I'm not proud of it." He stared at the table. "I used to do it. I'd keep track of the ones I put away. There's a, you can't help it. You wonder. You think, did he turn out all right? I read the file once a year."
"And?"
"He didn't last. They moved him twice. He got a cell with a decent man, and then they moved him, and he got a cell with a bad one. Four years. In the yard, in a, it was a knife. A sharpened toothbrush." Frank closed his eyes. "He took two days."
Daniel did not move.
"His wife went first," said Frank, very quietly. "Carol. A year and a half after the verdict. They said it was an overdose. They said, an accident. She'd been on pills. She was alone in the house." He swallowed. "There was a girl. They had a daughter."
"A daughter."
"About fourteen. She'd been in court every day. Don't you remember? She sat in the third row, on the left, with her mother. In a yellow ribbon."
The room had gone perfectly silent.
He remembered. It came to him not as a picture but as a sound. It was the small sound of a chair, in a courtroom, in the back, on the left, as a child shifted in her seat. A thin child, in a dark coat, with a yellow ribbon in her hair. A child who sat with her hands under her knees, straight. A child who did not cry. A child who, every morning, as twelve strangers filed in and took their seats, raised her eyes, and went down the line, one by one, and looked at each of their faces in turn, as if she were learning them.
She had looked at him for a long time.
He had not looked back. He had never once looked back. He had gone past her down the black-and-white hall, forty steps, counting, with his eyes on the floor.
"What happened to her?" he said.
"Foster care," said Frank. "I think. She'd have been fifteen. I lost her." He drew a long breath. "Her name was Ivy."
Ivy.
It was a simple, ordinary, old-fashioned name, like a leaf. It lay in the room like a dropped coin. He sat in the dark with it for a long, long time, and the little screen glowed, and the red numbers on it fell, one by one, toward the dawn.
Ivy.
She'd be twenty-four now.
She'd be about the age of a girl who sits up at night with a sick woman, and wipes her face, and says to a stranger on a cot, in a low voice, that she used to play chess with a man who liked the knight.
He did not say it. He did not let himself finish the thought. It lay at the very back of his mind, small and white and cold, like a pebble at the bottom of a stream, waiting for someone to pick it up.