“… and I mean it, Dunning-whatever your personal opinions about this matter, due process has been served, and I expect you and every other officer of the court and the law in this county to respect and uphold the grand jury’s findings. That includes extending your protection to whatever persons my office may choose to work with, as well as anyone else I think may need it. District Attorney Pearson will be absent for the duration of this affair, so I’ll be in charge. I hope I’m not the only one who realizes that-and I hope I make myself clear.”
The sheriff held up a hand. “Mr. Picton, sir, you can spare the effort. I’ll admit, I wasn’t in favor of this investigation, nor of this hearing, before today-but after what I seen and heard in there…” The man’s sun-creased eyes wandered to Clara Hatch; and it seemed to me like maybe a tear or two might come out of them. “Well, sir,” he went on, stroking his big gray mustache, “I’m man enough to admit when I’ve been wrong. And I’ve been wrong about this one.” He turned the tough eyes to Mr. Picton again. “We’ll get the woman up here, sir, provided the New York cops give us a hand. And all I can say concerning what comes after that is”-Sheriff Dunning held out a hand-“I hope the Lord stays with you, Mr. Picton. Because you’re doing his work.”
Mr. Picton, who might’ve been expected to at least show some gratitude or emotion in response to this pretty earnest eating of crow, just shook the sheriff’s hand quickly and nodded, making it clear that praise and damnation from such people were all one and the same to him. “Well, the Lord’s work right now involves me talking to that crowd outside,” he said with a flick of his head. “So if you and your deputies will just clear me a spot on the steps…”
“Yes, sir,” the sheriff answered quickly. “Right away. Abe! Gully! Let’s go, boys!”
The three men moved toward the front door, what was still tightly closed, while the rest of us fell in behind them. A strange kind of thrill-exciting, but frightening and maybe a little sad, at the same time-was beginning to course through me, and I think that all the other members of our team felt the same way. As for the Weston family, the only parts of said emotion they shared were the fear and the sadness, that much was pretty obvious: they clustered around Clara like a human wall, as if they thought someone might try to snatch her right out of their midst. Given the mood outside the court house, such didn’t seem an unreasonable attitude, either.
As the door cracked open, the same angry mumbling what we’d left outside two and a half hours ago started up again, and Sheriff Dunning and his boys had to do a little coaxing-and finally some straight-out pushing and shoving-to clear a little place at the top of the steps for Mr. Picton. Stepping out and putting a match to his pipe, Mr. Picton looked out over the bobbing, grousing heads with an expression of what you might call extreme disdain. After he’d let them shout at him for two or three minutes, he held his hands up.
“All right, all right, get yourselves under some kind of control, now, if that’s possible!” he shouted. “Neither the sheriff nor I have any desire to declare this an illegal assembly, but I’ve got to ask that you listen to what I have to say very carefully!” The general level of noise died down, and then Mr. Picton scanned the faces in front of him more closely. “Is Mr. Grose still here?”
“I am!” came the voice of the newspaper editor in return. He moved up to the front of the crowd. “Though I’m not too happy about standing in the midday July sun for hours on end, sir, I will say!”
“Quite understandable,” Mr. Picton answered. “But the wages of rabble-rousing have never been just, have they, Mr. Grose? At any rate, I’d like you to get the following details straight, so I don’t have to repeat them endlessly during the coming weeks. The grand jury has met, and it has made its decision-and we all owe that decision our respect.”
“Indeed we do!” Mr. Grose said, looking around with a smile. “I hope you’re prepared to respect it, Mr. Picton!”
“Oh, I am, Mr. Grose,” Mr. Picton answered, delighted to discover that the editor was assuming that the state’d lost its bid. “I am. At this moment an indictment is being prepared against Mrs. Elspeth Hunter of New York City, formerly Mrs. Elspeth Hatch of Ballston Spa, formerly Miss Elspeth Fraser of Stillwater, New York. She is charged with the first-degree murder of Thomas Hatch and Matthew Hatch, as well as the attempted murder of Clara Hatch. All on the night of the thirty-first of May, 1894.”
I’ll admit that I’d thought the crowd might break out into a good old-fashioned riot at this news. So I was surprised-as was Mr. Picton, from the look of him-when the sounds what came out of those citizens were ones of hushed horror, as if some ghost had just wandered across their collective path.
“What-what are you saying?” Mr. Grose asked. Then he looked to Sheriff Dunning. “Phil, does he mean-?”
The sheriff just gave Mr. Grose a long and serious stare. “I’d let him finish, if I were you, Horace.”
As the crowd quieted, Mr. Picton-no longer quite so testy as he’d been-finished his statement: “We have physical evidence that will demonstrate the woman’s guilt, we have a powerful motive that will be supported by witnesses, and we have an eyewitness to the shooting. This office would not take action on a matter like this with anything less.”
Mr. Picton paused, still looking like he expected some kind of an outburst from the crowd; but all he got was a sudden cry of “Jesus H. Christ!” from one man at the back of the herd, who immediately turned and started running down toward the trolley station. As he went, I caught enough of a glimpse of his face to be able to identify him:
It was the waiter who’d taken care of us at Canfield’s Casino. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he’d been sent by his boss to find out the latest developments in the case, so that odds on the trial could be posted at the Casino for those of Mr. Canfield’s clients who didn’t get enough satisfaction out of roulette, poker, and faro. But the man obviously hadn’t been ready for what he’d heard, and judging by how fast he beat it to the trolley station, I guessed that Saratoga’s true gamesmen were going to be able to get some very long odds on a conviction from Mr. Canfield starting that night.
As for the rest of the crowd, they just continued to stand and stare blankly at Mr. Picton, in the same sort of way that people all over town had stared at us when we’d brought Clara to the court house that morning: they were still resentful, all right, but added to the resentment now was the kind of confusion that an angry cow feels when it’s been smacked in the forehead with a shovel. It didn’t seem like most of them even knew what to do with themselves, until Sheriff Dunning stepped out in front of Mr. Picton.
“That all, sir?” the sheriff asked.
“Yes, Dunning,” Mr. Picton answered. “You’d better break them up-there’s nothing more to say.”
“Nothing more to say?” It was Mr. Grose, his voice now very different than it had been before: the pompous arrogance was all gone. “Picton,” he went on quietly, “do you realize what you’ve already said?”
Mr. Picton nodded, very seriously. “Yes. I do, Horace. And I’d be grateful if you’d print it in full in tomorrow’s edition.” His silver eyes moved out over the crowd as he smoked. “This isn’t a matter for sidewalk debate, ladies and gentlemen. The town of Ballston Spa and the county of Saratoga will be forced to search their souls, in the days to come. Let’s hope we can live with what we find.”
With that Mr. Picton turned and came back inside, while Sheriff Dunning and his men gently started to break the crowd up. Closing the court house door slowly, Mr. Picton then approached the Doctor.