Chapter 16
White
The jury room had changed while they were gone.
There were still twelve chairs. But the table had been cleared, and the little black screen was no longer in the middle. In its place, set squarely on the bare oak under the strip light, stood a machine.
It was a tape recorder. It was a gray metal one with two big reels, the kind that were sold in the sixties for businessmen, with a row of piano keys along the front and a green glass eye for the level. It had a worn leather case, open at the lid. A lead ran from it to a socket in the wall. Beside it sat a stack of small cardboard boxes, a dozen or more, each marked on the end in a clear, upright, familiar hand.
The first box said M.H. — March.
"Please sit," said White.
They sat.
There were four of them now. There had been seven. It was a thing none of them mentioned. Tom Rudd took the chair that had been Greg's, and Frank the one that had been Helen's, and Ivy, without being told, the empty seat by Ray's. They did not look at the vacant places. The twelve chairs stood round the table, in the dim yellow light, with their high carved backs, and the old oak shone like a pond.
Daniel took the head.
It was half past six. He sat with Helen's pin clenched in his fist. He felt, for the first time in a week, perfectly calm. It was a clean, dry, empty calm, like the quiet at the bottom of a well.
"For the record," said White. "I have a few things to play."
"We know who you are," said Frank.
"Do you?"
"You're the court reporter. You said so. You were, you took it down."
"I did."
"You were in the gallery."
"I was in the gallery every day." A faint dry note. "I sat on the left, in the second row, behind a child with a yellow ribbon. I was told I must not look at the jury. I did not. I looked at the back of the child's neck." There was a pause. "My wife was in the box. She was number nine."
The room did not move.
It was a extraordinary thing. They had all of them known. They had known since the transcript, since the notebook, since the green cardigan. They had known it as one knows the end of a story. But nobody had said it. It had hung in the air for three days like a held breath, and now it was out. It lay on the table in front of them, small and flat and mild, like a pair of spectacles.
"Margaret," said Daniel.
"Yes."
"Hale."
"Yes. And I am Walter. I do not suppose it matters." The voice was courteous and very tired. "I should like to say that I did not mean to introduce myself so late. I thought it would be indelicate. I thought it was better that you should hear her first."
A small click.
On the table the reels began to turn.
At first there was only hiss.
It was a long, soft, rushing noise, like the sea, and in it a faint rattle, a chair moving, a door shutting. Then a woman's voice said, close, clear, a little breathless, "Is it on? Walter, is it going? Does the little needle go up?"
"It goes up," said a man's voice, far off. It was the same voice. It was younger. It was dry and warm, and half amused. "It goes up when you talk."
"Then I'm talking." A laugh. "This is the evening of the seventh. It's, I'm sitting in the kitchen. It's ten past nine. I've had a cup of tea and a very small piece of cake. I am going to say it all out loud, because Walter says that it helps."
"It does help."
"You would say that. You can't hear yourself." There was a rustle. "All right. I'll begin."
She's alive, thought Daniel.
It was absurd. He sat at the long table with his hands on the oak and his heart going like a fist, and the sound came out of a worn gray machine in the middle of the room. It was the sound of a woman, nine years dead, in a warm kitchen, talking to her husband. She was fifty-eight. She had a low, clear, humorous voice, with a trace of something northern in the vowels. She sounded like a person who had said a great many words aloud in a great many classrooms and had never once raised her voice.
"It's a funny jury," said Margaret Hale. "I think it's a good one. There are some very sensible people. There's a plumber, who's the most sensible of all, and says almost nothing. There's a young man who looks like a boy, and who, I think, is the foreman. He's very, he's called Mr. Wells. He's a decent sort. He's tired. He's got a wife who's very ill and he's trying not to show it." There was a pause. "I've said to him that we'll be quick. I think we will. I think it's rather a clear case. Though I do have, one or two."
"What?" said Walter.
"There's a sheet that isn't in the box."
The reel turned. On the oak, a pale green light flickered, up and down, with her voice.
"It's an odd thing. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. I want to look at it again. I want to be sure." She yawned. "It's probably nothing. It's probably only that I'm a, you know how I am. I can't leave a sum alone."
"You're a very good teacher."
"I'm a tiresome one."
"It's a good fault."
"Walter," said Margaret, and there was suddenly a different note in her voice, a lower and gentler one, which made the hair stir on Daniel's neck. "He's got a little girl. Did I say? She's three. Her name's June."
The tape hissed.
"She's called June," said the voice, "and I said, that's when we were married. He was, I think he was rather touched. He looked as if I'd given him something." A rustle. "I've been thinking about it all afternoon. I'd like to be quick. I'd like to be kind to him. I'm going to try."
The tape stopped.
It ran on, with its reels turning, for several seconds, with only the soft rush of air. Nobody spoke. Daniel was not aware that he was crying until he felt it on the back of his hand.
There were eleven tapes.
They were not played in order. White chose them. He did it, as he said, with some care. "I do not wish to be melodramatic," he said, after the first. "I wish to be exact." So the reels were lifted off, and others put on, by a hand that none of them saw, and the long gray machine turned and turned in the middle of the table, and the voice of a dead woman filled the room.
The ninth.
"He didn't send it." She was in the kitchen again. Her voice was flat and gentle. "I don't understand, Walter. I asked him on Wednesday. He said he would, and I believe he thinks he has. But the bailiff says there's been no note. I asked, in the hall. He said, the foreman hasn't given me anything, ma'am." A pause. "I don't think he's lying. I think it's, I think something's gone wrong. I think he's put it somewhere."
"Is it important?"
"It's the only thing that is."
"Then ask again."
"I'm going to. I'm going to ask the judge. In front of him. I thought, I'll say it very politely." She sighed. "I'd rather not. He's a nice young man. It's just that there's a, there are twelve of us. And it's very easy to let it go."
The tenth, in the evening. A different voice. It was thin, dry, almost without expression. It was recorded in a car, with the sound of traffic. "They said I'd been on a telephone. I haven't got a telephone. I've never owned one. They took me down the stairs, and there was a man at the bottom who looked as if he'd been hit. He said, I'm sorry, ma'am. I said, What for? He said, I don't know." A gap. "The judge didn't look at me. He read something from a piece of paper. I've been a teacher for thirty-one years. I have never been talked about in the third person in my life."
The twentieth of April. In the kitchen. Slow and stiff. "They've suspended me. The board met on Tuesday. They had the, they had a letter from the court. It said I'd been removed for unauthorized communication. It's on my file. They said they'd have to, it's a policy. Thirty-one years." She laughed. It was dreadful. "I taught half of them. I taught the chairman. He was very bad at fractions."
August. "I wrote to Mr. Lowe. I thought I ought. I thought, somebody should. I said I was one of the jurors, and that I had not agreed. I said I'd tried." The voice was level. "He wrote back. It's a, he has a very neat hand. He said, Dear Mrs. Hale, thank you for trying. I'm sorry that it cost you. He said, Do you play chess?"
A brief, soft, helpless laugh.
"I do," said Margaret Hale. "I'm rather good. I've taught him an opening."
The tape went on.
There were letters, which she read aloud. There was a long night of rain in October, when she said she had been to the cemetery, and read the names on the stones, and thought of nobody in particular. There was a morning in December when she said she had been invited to a school Christmas concert and had stood at the back, behind a pillar, and nobody had known her. There was a day in March the next year, when Mr. Lowe had been killed. She had learned of it in the paper. She read it out, slowly, in a clear voice, without a word of comment. When she had finished, she was silent for a very long time.
"Four days," said Margaret. "If I'd been, if only I'd been a bit louder."
Four days.
Daniel sat with his face turned down. He could not look at the machine. He could hear, at the end of the long oak table, someone breathing in sharp ragged gasps. It was Ivy. She had both hands over her mouth and her eyes squeezed shut, and she was rocking, a little, to and fro.
"Mr. Lowe's daughter wrote to me," said the tape. "She's fifteen. She's in a foster home in the, I forget where. She enclosed a drawing of a knight." The voice was gentle. "She said she'd found a book in the library."
"Don't," said Ivy, in a whisper.
"I wrote back. I said she must come and see me."
"Please."
"I don't know what I'll say."
The tape clicked.
The last box was very small.
It held a reel the size of a saucer. White said it was the final one, and that it was short, and that it had been recorded in the early evening, on the eleventh of May, fourteen months after the verdict, at the kitchen table. It had been, he said, the last conversation they had.
The reel turned. For some time there was only the hiss.
Then Margaret's voice said, very quietly, "Walter?"
"Here," said the man.
"I thought you'd gone out."
"I'm in the next room."
"Oh. Good." A pause. "I wanted to say something. I'd like it to be on the tape."
"Why?"
"Because I'd like it to be somewhere." She laughed, a little. "It's only a thing. I've been thinking. It's not, I don't want you to be upset. I think I'm a bit tired."
"You haven't slept."
"No. I don't think I can. I keep, it's the word. It's excused. I keep hearing it. It's such a, they use it like a, it makes it sound as if you've been let off." She sighed. "I've written it out three hundred times. In my head. Juror Nine is excused. And I can't get it to mean anything but what it does."
"Margaret."
"I'm all right. I'm all right, darling. I only wanted to say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't louder. I should have been. I know that. I should have stood up in the room and said, I won't sit down until I've seen it. I'd have been a, I'd have been difficult." A faint laugh. "I've never been difficult. I've been reasonable. It's, that's the whole trouble, Walter. It was a very reasonable room."
"You were right."
"Was I?"
"Yes."
"It doesn't help."
"No."
"No," said Margaret. "It doesn't." There was a long soft pause. "I'll put the kettle on. Would you like a cup?"
"I'd like one."
"I'll bring it through."
There was a rustle. The sound of a chair. The sound of a small, quiet step, going away on a tiled floor. And for a very long time, on the reel, in the stillness of a kitchen nine years ago, there was nothing at all, only a faint ticking, and the far-off drone of a lawnmower.
The tape ran out.
It flapped, round and round, with a soft rhythmic slap. Somebody reached out and turned it off.
"She died that night," said White.
He said it simply. He said it as one says the time. "She put the kettle on. She did not bring the tea. I found her in the garage at nine." He was silent. "The coroner used the word misadventure. I used another."
Nobody spoke.
"She had been in a very good humor, all that week. She had marked a stack of papers for a neighbor's child. She had made a cake." The voice was flat. "I do not know if she meant to. I have asked myself. I have gone through every word on every tape, a thousand times. I think it was a very small thing. I think she was sitting in the car, with the engine on, for the heater, because she was cold. And I think she sat there a little longer than she had meant to. I think that she was thinking about the word."
"Walter," said Daniel.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"I know that you are."
"I'm so, I'm, there's nothing I can, I'm sorry." His voice broke. "I'd give anything. I'd give, I'd give you my life. I know it's not, I know it doesn't."
"No."
"What do you want?"
"I told you," said White, patiently. "I want you to finish."
He talked to them for a long time.
It was the only time in the whole week that he spoke at length. He did it mildly, in the same dry, tired, careful voice, with long pauses between his sentences, like a man crossing a stream on stones. He sat somewhere in the building, in the dark, at the other end of a wire, and they could not see him. They could see only the little green glass eye of the machine.
"I am not a vengeful man," he said. "I should like that to be understood. I have been asked, in my mind, many times, whether I hate you. I do not know. I have looked for it. I have gone through myself, like a man going through a house for a lost key." A pause. "I do not find it."
"Then why?" said Tom.
"Because of the reasons."
Nobody answered.
"I took down every word of that trial," said White. "Four weeks. A hundred and ninety thousand words. I sat in a small box beside the witness stand, with my hands on the keys, and I listened to people give reasons. The detective had one. He was sure. The witness had one. He had seen a blue car. The prosecutor had a very good one, and a daughter at college. The lawyer had a drink problem, and a heavy docket, and a client who could not pay." A faint dry sound, as of a smile. "And the bailiff. And the clerk. And the judge, who wanted his lunch."
"We're not monsters," said Frank hoarsely.
"No."
"We did a, it was a, we were doing our jobs."
"Of course you were." The voice was gentle. "That is what interested me. That is what I have been trying to say. Not one of you was a villain. Not one. I looked for a villain for years, and there was not a single one. There was no man in a mask. There was only twelve decent people in a room, with somewhere better to be."
The room was silent.
"Each of you made a small move. Each had a reason. Each reason was a good one, and you would have been very hurt if I had suggested otherwise. And a man, who was a perfectly good teacher, with a daughter, went to prison for a thing he did not do. And died there. And his wife died. And mine." He stopped. "And in all of that, there was nobody to blame."
"So you made someone," said Daniel.
"I made a room."
"You killed Ray. You killed Greg."
"I offered choices."
"They were cages."
"They were choices," said White, sharply, for the first time. "You are perfectly free to say that they were not fair. I would agree. I should say that they were as fair as I could make them. But I did not put Mr. Dunn in a cage. He accepted. I did not make Mr. Pruitt run. I told him twice." The voice dropped. "I do not say that I am blameless. I am the opposite. I am the only man in this building who has done, with full knowledge, with years of planning, a thing that he knows to be wrong. I do not pretend. I am the villain, Mr. Wells. I have taken the job."
Daniel did not breathe.
"Somebody had to be," said White. "It was the only way that anyone would ever look."
"And my daughter," said Daniel.
"Yes."
"She's twelve."
"She is."
"You called her the reason."
"Because she is." The voice did not change. "You gave her to Margaret across a table. You said, this is why. I have wanted for nine years to know what she weighed. I wanted to see her put on the scale." There was a very small pause. "I had thought it would be hard. I had thought I should not be able to do it. I find, I confess, that I have had more difficulty than I expected."
"What do you mean?"
"She has told me that I am doing the very thing I hate."
Daniel stared at the little green eye.
"It is a rather good point," said White, slowly. "I have been thinking about it since four o'clock. She is right. I put a piece on the board that had done nothing wrong. I made her pay for another's move." The voice was almost reflective. "It is what was done to Mr. Lowe. It is what was done to Margaret. It is, I think, the very sin. And I have done it with great care."
"Then stop."
"I cannot."
"Why?"
"Because it is not finished."
"What isn't?"
"The trial."
He said it so quietly that for a moment they all thought they had misheard.
"There was a trial, Mr. Wells. It was held in this building, nine years ago. It was conducted in the proper form. It reached a verdict. It was wrong. But it has never been reviewed. No one has ever stood up and said, the record is incomplete. It has been an error in a file." A paper turned, somewhere, with a dry whisper. "I am a court reporter. I have spent thirty years of my life ensuring that a record is accurate. It is the only thing I know how to do. I cannot leave it."
"What do you want?" said Frank.
"The record corrected."
"How?"
"By testimony," said White. "In open court. Each of you will be asked to say what you did. Not a summary. Not an apology. What you did, exactly, and why. It will be taken down. It will be entered. And then, when it is entered, and signed, and attested, it will be sent." A pause. "I have an envelope. It is addressed to the district attorney of Marlow County. It contains the first four hundred pages. It has been ready for three years."
"And then?"
"And then," said the voice, "there is a very old sheet of paper, and I think that all of you would like to see what is on it."
Frank Ross made a sound.
"I think you know the one," said White.
"I'd like to, I'd like to say, it was."
"Not yet, Mr. Ross. You will have your turn." The voice was almost kind. "The court has one matter left. It is the matter of the foreman. He has the longest testimony, and he has been the most reluctant, and I should like to hear it last. I should like it to be complete." He paused. "I should like him to say what was on the note, and why he put it in his pocket, and what he did when he read the obituary."
Daniel's heart stopped.
"Yes," said White. "I know about that, too."
He stood very slowly.
He stood in the head chair, with his hands flat on the oak and the old pin biting into his palm, and looked up at the little round grille in the ceiling. His face was gray, and calm.
"That's what the last game is," he said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's not a game. It's not, it's not a trap. It's not about whether I live." He heard his own voice, level, surprised. "You don't want me dead. You don't want any of us. You want a, you want it said."
"Yes," said White.
"The whole thing."
"Yes."
"And if I say it?"
There was a very long pause.
"Then I do not know," said White. "I have never got so far. I have planned a great deal. But I confess I have never been able to imagine what happens next."
On the table in front of him, in the pale light of the strip, the empty reels slowly stopped turning. A small green light on the machine blinked, and went out. And Daniel Wells, who had spent nine years not saying a thing, stood in a jury room with his hands on a table and understood, with a clarity that was almost joy, that there was nothing left in the world to be afraid of except the sound of his own voice.