Chapter 19
Check
Courtroom Two was smaller than he remembered.
It was a high dim room, paneled in dark oak to the ceiling, with tall windows set so far up that they gave no more than a gray wash of light. A great plaster seal of the county hung over the bench. Below it, in the old leather chair that the judge had once sat in, with a blanket across his knees, sat an old man in a wheelchair. His white head was bowed. He was writing, or seemed to be, on a narrow paper strip that curled from a little black machine on a stand at his elbow. It made a faint dry whisper as it ran.
THE COURT: Please be seated.
Daniel sat.
They were all given places. It was done quickly, with no ceremony, by a hand that came from the old man's chair and pointed, as a teacher points at the empty desks. Tom Rudd, who had been a bailiff, was put in the gallery, on the second bench, with his cap in his lap. Ivy was told to take the jury box. She went to it without a word, and climbed in, and sat in the front row with her knees together and her fists on her thighs. And June, who would not leave her father's side, was put at the long table in front of the bench, where the defense had sat. She was given a chair. She sat on the edge of it, upright, with her notebook in her lap and her eyes on the old man.
It was the table where Helen Marsh had sat.
Daniel was in the chair beside it. It was a hard one with arms. It faced the bench, and the old man looked down at him, from nine feet, with eyes as pale and gray as dishwater.
"This is the matter of the foreman," said Walter Hale.
His voice was the voice from the speakers. It was exactly the same, dry and slow and unhurried. But it came now from a living throat, and with it came small, wet, tired sounds that had been taken out by the wire: the click of his breath, the faint catch before each phrase. He spoke from memory. He did not look at any paper. He said it as a man says a creed.
"On the ninth of March, nine years ago, in this room, a jury delivered a verdict in the case of the State of Marlow against Martin Lowe. The verdict was wrong. It was wrong because the foreman of that jury, in possession of a document that bore on the question of the defendant's guilt, failed to place it before the court. In addition, he made a statement to an officer of the court which he knew to be false, and by which a fellow juror was removed. These acts were not, in the ordinary sense, crimes. They were choices. I have thought for nine years about what to call them, and I have never found a word. I will call them the move."
THE COURT: The defendant will rise.
Daniel rose.
It hurt. He stood with his hand on the table, swaying, in the cold gray light, with a sprained ankle and four cracked ribs and a child's eyes on the back of his neck. He had not eaten since yesterday morning. He thought, clearly, this is what it was like for him. He thought of a man in a good suit, in this room, in the very chair, with his daughter in the third row, and a ribbon.
"How do you plead?" said Walter Hale.
"Guilty."
He heard June's breath stop.
"The defendant understands that he is entitled to a trial?"
"I understand."
"That he is entitled to counsel."
"I had one," said Daniel. "She's in a vault."
It was not meant to be cruel. It came out of him flat, like a fact. There was a little rustle from the gallery, where Tom had put his hand over his face. On the bench, the thin gray head moved, very slightly, and the paper strip ran on.
THE COURT: The plea of guilty is accepted.
They stood in the dim room, and nobody spoke.
It was a very strange quiet. It was not the quiet of the jury room, or the cellar, or the long tiled hall, all of which had been charged with something, and had hummed. It was a perfectly empty, dry, almost peaceful silence, like the pause after a long speech in a church. The old man in the wheelchair sat with his hands folded on the blanket. He looked down at them, and he did not look like a monster. He looked like a very tired person at the end of a long job.
"Mr. Lowe received twenty-five years," he said.
"I know."
"He served four. I should like to be exact. He served three years, ten months, and eleven days. I have a letter from the warden." The voice was low. "I do not propose twenty-five years to you. I do not suppose that you would survive it, and I do not want you to. I think a sentence should be something that a man can serve. That is what separates a sentence from a revenge."
"What is it?"
"Four hours."
Daniel said nothing.
"In the Pen. At fourteen degrees. It is the same one. It has been cleaned." The voice was level. "Four hours, for four years. It is a very imperfect scale. I could not find a better. The court will adjourn at a quarter to twelve, and the doors of this building will open, and the foreman will be released, if he is alive."
"If he's alive."
"I will say, for the record, that I do not expect it."
June stood up.
She did not say anything. She stood beside the defense table, with her notebook against her chest, very straight and very small, and looked up at the bench. Her face was white. Her braid had come loose, and hung over one shoulder in a long untidy rope. There were two spots of red on her cheeks, and her mouth was shut so tight that it had gone thin.
"No," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"No. You can't."
"Miss Wells."
"It's four hours. It's fourteen degrees. That's not, that's not a sentence. That's just." She took a breath. "That's a way of killing someone and calling it something else."
"It is a sentence."
"It's a trick."
"It is a form," said Walter Hale. He said it with great patience. "It has a charge. It has a plea. It has a finding, and a term. It is entered on the record, and will stand as a record, after I am dead. It is, I assure you, as fair as a thing can be which began so unfairly." He paused. "I should add that it is the only thing I have."
"It isn't."
"Child."
"It isn't. You've got me." She took a step forward. She put her notebook down on the table. She did it deliberately, as one puts down a piece. "I've been playing you for four days. I know how you play. You let me win. You stopped trying on Monday night. You said good every time I took something, and you meant it. You were proud." Her voice cracked. "Somebody who wants to kill my dad doesn't say good."
"I did not say I wanted to kill him."
"You said it's what you expect."
"I said that I do not expect him to live." The old man raised a thin hand, and let it fall. "It is not the same. I wish that it were simpler. But I think that I have always, in some corner, hoped that he would."
"Then let him out."
"I cannot."
"Why not?"
"Because it is a sentence," said Walter Hale. "And a sentence, once given, is only a sentence if it is served."
"Mrs. Hale said that it was reasonable."
It was Ivy.
She had stood up in the jury box. She was holding the rail with both hands, a thin white girl in hospital blue, with her bare feet on the boards and her face turned up. Her voice was small and clear, with no hardness in it. It carried, in the high room, like a bell.
"I read the tapes. I've heard them since I was seventeen. She said it was a very reasonable room." She swallowed. "You told me. When I came to you. You said, the trouble with the room was that nobody in it was unreasonable. You said that if somebody had been rude, or loud, or cruel, we'd all have noticed. You said it was only that everybody was sensible."
"Ivy."
"This is sensible, too."
The old man did not answer.
"It's a very sensible plan. It's got a charge and a plea and a finding. It's got a sentence that a man could serve." She drew a long ragged breath. "And in the, at the end of it there's a man in a cold room. And a, and a girl. And you've said everyone's welcome to go." She was crying again. "But that's what they said to my mother."
"It is not the same."
"It's exactly the same!"
"Ivy, my dear," said Walter Hale, very gently. "I did not think I should have to explain it to you."
"Explain what?"
"That I have no choice."
"You've got every choice!"
"I am seventy-two years old." It was a quiet statement, plain, with no self-pity in it. "I have a tumor in my right lung the size of a plum. I have, the doctors tell me, about five weeks. It is a very fine mind, I am told, that has been left to me, and a very poor body. I find that I am not able to leave it unfinished."
"Then finish it."
"I am."
"Not like this."
"There is no other way," said the old man. "I have looked."
He lifted his eyes. He looked at the girl in the jury box, and the child at the defense table, and the man standing between them, and for a moment his old, pale, creased face did something that he had not allowed it to do in four days. It trembled. It was only for an instant. It was the look of a man who has put a great weight down, a long way from home, and found that he does not know how to pick it up again.
"Mr. Rudd," he said. "I should be grateful if you would escort the child."
"No," said June.
"The doors are open. The car is at the gate. There is a detective in a gray coat at the front steps, who has been standing in the rain since four o'clock. I think she would like to see her." The voice was gentle. "Mr. Rudd. Please."
Tom stood.
He did it slowly. He came down the aisle, with his cap in his hand, a big gray man in a crumpled uniform, and he stood at the rail with his face working. He did not look at Daniel. He put out one hand, and said, in a very low voice, "Come on, miss."
"I'm not going."
"Miss."
"I'm not going!"
"June," said Daniel.
He did not know what he would say. It had come out of him by itself. He turned. She was standing at the table with her fists clenched, trembling from head to foot, and her eyes were wide and dark and wet, and she looked at him with a ferocity so complete that it was nearly joy.
He knelt.
It was a thing his ribs did not forgive. He went down on one knee on the old boards, with a gasp, and took both her hands. They were small, and cold, and a good deal rougher than he remembered. There was a pencil callus on the right middle finger. He held them in his own.
"I want you to go," he said.
"I won't."
"I'll be all right."
"You won't."
"I will. I've got a, there's a thing." He kept his voice very low. "I can't tell you. He'd hear. But Helen gave me something. A sentence. I've been saving it."
"What is it?"
"I'll tell you when it's done."
"That's what you always say."
"I know."
"You always say you'll tell me when it's over, and then it's, and you never." She was crying now, openly, furiously, with her mouth square. "I'm tired of it. I'm so tired of it."
"I know. I know you are. I'm sorry."
"Then tell me."
"I will." He drew a breath. "I swear to you. I'll tell you everything. The whole thing. In order. I'll tell you what I did and why. I'll tell you about the tiles, and the forty steps, and your mother. I'll tell you all of it. But you've got to go first."
"Why?"
"Because I can't do it if you're here."
It was the truest thing that he had said in nine years. She heard it. She stood still. She looked at his face for a long time, a long steady considering look, as she looked at a board. Then she nodded, once, very slightly. She put her arms round his neck, and held on, and said into his collar, so softly that no one else could have heard, "It's the knight, isn't it?"
"What?"
"The thing. The sentence. It's a knight."
He did not answer.
"It jumps over," whispered June. "I'm not stupid, Dad."
"No."
"Okay." She let go. She stepped back. She wiped her face on her sweater sleeve, and picked up her notebook, and put her hand in Tom Rudd's. She did not look round. She walked up the aisle with her head high, between the empty benches, and at the great oak doors she stopped, and turned.
"I love you," said June.
"I love you."
"I'm still mad."
"I know," said Daniel.
She went out.
He walked to the Pen himself.
They did not make him. There was a small door, to the left of the bench, a heavy low steel one, painted gray, which had once led from the courtroom to the cells. Tom had told him about it, in the first days. Prisoners had come through it. It had been a quick, sad, ordinary passage, eleven feet long, with a bench at the end. The door was open. A thin frosty breath came out of it, white against the dark. And on the other side, a long way back, he could see the other door, the one in the jury room, and a gray blanket on a bench, and the shape of a man lying under it.
Ray.
He walked slowly.
Behind him, in the high dim room, he heard the little black machine begin to chatter, a steady dry stream, as the old man's hands moved on the keys. It was a pleasant sound, like rain. It came after him all the way.
THE COURT: The defendant is remanded.
"Wait," said Ivy.
He turned.
She had climbed out of the jury box. She stood in the well of the court, in front of the bench, between him and the old man in the chair. She was very small. She had her hands at her sides, and her chin up, and her feet apart, like someone braced against wind.
"Don't do it," she said.
"Ivy, my dear."
"Don't. Please."
"You will oblige me by sitting down."
"I can't."
"It is not a question of can."
"I can't let you." Her voice shook. "You, I love you. You took me in. You were the only, when I had nothing. You gave me a room. You taught me, you read me the tapes. And I thought, he's so kind. I thought, he'd never." She drew a breath. "I thought you'd say stop. I thought you'd say, when it came to it."
"I have said what I have said."
"Then I'll say it for you."
She turned.
There was a panel on the wall behind the bench. He had not noticed it. It was a flat steel box, the size of a small suitcase, set into the oak, with a row of switches and a little window of red glass. It was the sort of thing a janitor would use. A sign above it said, COURTS — MASTER. It had been painted over so many times that the words were nearly gone. She had known it was there. She had known for four days.
"Ivy," said the old man.
She ran.
It was no more than six steps. She went round the end of the bench, with her sleeve flying, and flung herself at the little steel door, and wrenched it open. Her hand went in. He saw her fingers close on a lever, a long black one, with a rubber grip.
"No!" cried Walter Hale.
It was not the voice from the speakers. It was a high, cracked, quavering voice, an old man's, appalled. He had half risen. The blanket had fallen off his knees. And in his lap, where it had lain all through the trial, hidden by a fold of the cloth, there was a small black thing. It was an old revolver, short and blunt, with a worn wooden grip. It had belonged, Daniel would learn afterward, to Margaret's father. It had lain for fifty years in a drawer. Walter had put it in his pocket on the first morning, in case somebody tried to cut the gas.
He had never meant to touch it.
He lifted it. He did it with both hands, in a way that was almost shy, like a man picking up a bird. His face was a gray mask of horror. He was shaking all over. He said, clearly, in a small hoarse voice, "Ivy. Ivy. Leave it. Please. It, I'm only, I'm not going to, leave it."
"I won't."
"Please."
"I'm going to open it."
"I'll shoot," said Walter Hale.
He did not seem to believe it.
She turned. She was smiling. It was a perfectly sweet, perfectly clear, perfectly exhausted smile, like a child's who has been told something silly. She had her hand on the lever. She looked at the old man, in his wheelchair, with the tube in his nose, and the gun shaking in his two thin hands, and the tears running down the creases of his face.
"No, you won't," said Ivy Lowe.
She pulled.
The gun went off.
It was not loud. That was the thing he would remember. It was not a roar. It was a flat, dry, small crack, like a plank being broken across a knee, and it did not echo at all in the high oak room. A puff of smoke rose, gray, from the muzzle. The little steel door banged. And the girl in the hospital scrubs took one step backward, with her hand still on the lever, and looked down, with a mild, surprised, inquiring air, at the front of her blue shirt.
There was a small dark mark on it, just under the breastbone.
"Oh," said Ivy.
She sat down.
She did it gently, with her back against the wall, in the shadow of the bench, as one sits at the end of a long walk. She put her hand to her chest. She looked at it. It was wet. Her bare feet stuck out in front of her on the boards. She raised her head, slowly, and her eyes, large and dark, found him across the room.
"Daniel," she said, conversationally. "I think he's shot me."
He had not moved.
He found that he was standing in the doorway of the Pen, with his hand on the cold steel, and that he had not taken a single step. He could not. It was as if he had been stopped, in a dream, by a hand on his chest. He looked at the old man in the chair.
Walter Hale was staring at the gun.
He held it out in front of him, in both hands, at arm's length, as if it were something that had crawled onto him. His mouth was open. His eyes were round and vacant. The oxygen tube had slipped, and hung across his cheek, and a thin hiss was coming from it, unheeded, into the room. "It went off," he whispered. "I didn't, I didn't mean. It went off. It, Ivy. Ivy."
He dropped it.
It hit the floor with a clatter, and lay there, and spun slowly, and was still.
"Ivy!" cried Walter Hale. "Ivy! Oh, my dear, oh, my dear girl!"
He tried to stand.
He had not stood in two years. His legs would not hold him. He got halfway out of the chair, with his hands on the arms, and his whole thin body quivering, and fell forward over the bench, and lay across it with his white head in the crook of his arm, shaking. He made no sound. He had none to make. Then the old, cracked, quavering voice rose in a thin high wail, which went on and on, without words, in the high dim room, like the cry of a very small child.
Tom Rudd had come back.
He had not been in the room. He had been in the hall, with June's hand in his, at the foot of the great doors, and he had heard the shot, and he had run. He came down the aisle like a bull. He saw the girl against the wall, and the red spreading on her shirt, and he went down on his knees beside her without a word, and pressed both of his huge hands over the little dark mark, as if he could hold it closed.
"Ivy," he said. "Ivy. Look at me. Stay with me."
"I'm all right."
"You're not."
"No." She smiled. "I'm sorry. I think it's, I'm cold."
"I've got you."
"I know you have. You always, you carried my mother's coat." Her eyes went to Daniel. They were already a little far away. They had a clear and lovely and curiously unfocused look, as of someone looking at a very distant hill. "Daniel. Go in."
"I can't."
"Go in. Please. He's, I think he'll, it's the only way. He'll, I think it's the only way he'll stop."
"Ivy."
"You've got a sentence. You said so. I heard." She coughed. A small bright thread of red ran down from her lip. "It's not, it's not for me. It's for him. Go and, and say it."
"I'll, you'll, we'll get you a."
"Go," said Ivy.
He went.
He did not remember crossing the threshold.
He remembered the cold. It came to meet him like a wall. It was not the cold of weather. It was a still, hard, dry, bone-white cold, which seemed to come out of the very metal, and he stepped into it and felt his eyelashes stiffen in a second. There was a little bench. There was a stainless-steel drain in the floor. There was a fan, high in the wall, whirring softly, in and out, like a breath.
On the far side of the cell, in a gray blanket, lay a man.
He did not look at him. He turned, and the heavy door swung to behind him, on its own weight, with a slow dull clang. The latch dropped. The thermometer on the wall, in its metal frame, began to move.
20. 19. 18.
Check, said a voice.
It was an old, soft, shattered whisper. It came from a small round speaker in the wall by the door, low down, almost at the level of his knee. It was not directed at him. It was not directed at anyone. It was a thing said aloud, by a man alone in a big room, because he had said it so many times in his head that it came out by itself. He heard the dry rustle of a chair, and a great gasping sob, and the thin keen of a hand pulling at a tube.
Check.
Check, and it's mate. It's mate. Margaret, it's mate.
Daniel stood in the cold.
His breath went up in front of him like smoke. He was shaking. He looked down. His hands were already pale, and stiff, and the fingers of the left would not close all the way. He looked at the thermometer, and at the black door, and at the gray shape on the bench, which lay under its blanket with its socks on its feet. He thought of a girl in a yellow ribbon. He thought of a boy's voice, on a tape, you were all very kind. He thought of a sheet of paper in a drawer, and an old woman in a gray blanket, saying, Louder.
It's the only way he'll stop.
He put his hand into his pocket.
There were two things in it. One was a small square of paper, soft as cloth, which had been folded, and folded again. One was a little silver pin in the shape of a pair of scales. He took them out. He held them in his stiff white fingers in the thin light of the little bulb. He looked at them for a very long time.
It jumps over, said June.
It's the only piece that can.
He turned to the speaker.
It was only a small round grille. It was set in the wall, a foot from the floor, with a tiny black eye in the middle. It had been put there to let the guards hear a prisoner. It was an old thing, and crude. It went up, he knew, through the wall, and across the little passage, and out into the room beyond, to a desk, under the great seal of the county, where an old man was lying with his face in his arm.
He drew a breath. It was a long one. It hurt, all the way down. He held it, as a man holds it before a plunge, and then, in the loudest voice he had ever used in his life, in the voice of a man who has been told by a dying woman to say a sentence properly, in open court, he spoke.
"Your Honor."
In the courtroom, the sobbing stopped.
"Your Honor," said Daniel Wells, "I move that you recuse yourself."