CHAPTER 44

The frightened little girl and her family arrived at the court house during the midday recess, escorted by Sheriff Dunning and a gang of specially appointed deputies. The Doctor made sure he was at the back door to greet Clara, and judging by the look on her face when she saw the crowd what was waiting for her, it was a good thing he did: even during my old days downtown, I’d rarely seen a kid what looked so confused, so lost, and so desperate. Searching through the jungle of faces and bodies what swarmed around her family’s carriage, Clara appeared to calm down only when her golden-brown eyes locked onto the Doctor; and she fairly flew down to the ground in her rush to get to him. Some nearby newspapermen took particular interest in that fact, for reasons I didn’t quite understand until I forced myself to look at the case from the opposition’s point of view: if you were disposed to think that the Doctor was controlling and engineering what Clara said and did, then her plainly urgent need to be close to him might’ve looked sinister, indeed.

As the Westons followed Clara and the Doctor into the court house, Sheriff Dunning’s men strung themselves out across the back doorway, keeping the curious crowd outside. Then we all went up to the second floor of the building, where we sat in Mr. Picton’s office and ate some sandwiches what Cyrus had picked up from Mrs. Hastings. We tried to be as merry as we could, given the circumstances, and nobody said anything about the case; but none of it seemed to make Clara any easier in her mind. She didn’t eat anything, just sipped on a glass of lemonade what Cyrus gave her; and each time she set the glass down, her one good hand, sticky with lemon juice and sugar, wandered to either Mrs. Weston or the Doctor, who were sitting on either side of her. Not seeming to hear any of the light conversation or strained jokes what floated around the room, she just stared at each of our faces kind of blankly until it was near time for us to return to court; and then, when she thought no one was paying attention, she looked up at the Doctor.

“Is my mama here?” she asked, very quietly.

The Doctor nodded, with a gentle smile but a very serious look in his eyes. “Yes. She’s downstairs.”

Clara began to kick her feet against the legs of her chair and turned her head down to stare into her lap. “This is my Sunday dress,” she said, carefully straightening the flowery, light blue fabric with her good hand. “I just didn’t want to eat so’s it wouldn’t get it messy.”

Mrs. Weston smiled down at her. “Clara, honey, don’t worry about that. If you’re hungry-”

But Clara just shook her head, hard enough to bring the big braid in her hair round front and reveal some of the nasty scar on the back of her neck.

The Doctor lifted a hand to touch the top of her head. “Very sensible. I wish you could teach Stevie to be so sensible. His clothes are an infernal mess most of the time.”

Clara looked up at me quickly and smiled.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I’m just a pig in a sty, nothing I can do about it.” By way of emphasis, I let a piece of roast beef from my sandwich fall onto my shirt, a move what got a scratchy little laugh out of our witness. Then she turned away, quickly and shyly.

By two o’clock we were back in our seats in the main courtroom, while the Westons waited outside with Clara. Mr. Picton had elected to open his case with testimony from the former sheriff, Morton Jones, a grizzled, tough old type who looked like he’d spent the better part of his retirement on a bar seat. Jones told of what he’d found when he’d arrived at the Hatch house on the night of May 31st, 1894, and what steps he’d taken to address the situation, including telephoning Mr. Picton. This summary acquainted the jury with the basic facts of the case, facts what Mr. Darrow did nothing to challenge; when his turn came to cross-examine the witness, he turned the opportunity down.

Next onto the stand was Dr. Benjamin Lawrence, the sometime coroner. He told about how, when he’d arrived in the Hatch house, he’d found Mrs. Hatch in a state of extreme hysteria and the bloodied children laid out on sofas and a table in the sitting room. He’d given the mother laudanum to quiet her down, then set to work on the kids, quickly determining that Matthew and Thomas were dead. But Clara was still alive, though Libby and the housekeeper, Mrs. Wright, thought otherwise. Testifying that her pulse had been very faint but still detectable, Dr. Lawrence went on to say that he’d given the girl half a nitroglycerin tablet and then injected brandy into her arm to get her heart moving faster. After that, he set to work stopping her bleeding. But the wound itself was beyond his capabilities, and he’d phoned up to Saratoga to ask Dr. Jacob Jenkins, a surgical specialist, to come down as quickly as possible. Jenkins was set to follow Lawrence to the stand, but before he was through with the first medical witness Mr. Picton made sure to ask whether Libby Hatch’s hysterical state had immobilized her in any way. Not at all, Dr. Lawrence answered; when he’d gotten to the house, Mrs. Hatch had been running through each and every room at a high speed.

“Almost as if she had some purpose, would you say?” Mr. Picton asked.

Dr. Lawrence was about to agree, but Mr. Darrow shot up. “I must object to that, Your Honor. The question calls for a speculative answer from the witness, who cannot have known what was in or on the former Mrs. Hatch’s mind.”

“Agreed,” Judge Brown said with a nod. “I’ve warned you, Mr. Picton-no suggestions. The jury will ignore the state’s question.”

Sitting forward again, I heard Dr. Kreizler mumble, “As if they could.” Then I saw him hide a smile with his hand.

Mr. Picton had a few final questions for Dr. Lawrence: had he been in attendance at the Hatch house when Mrs. Hatch had given birth to her three children? Dr. Lawrence answered that he had indeed. And what had been Mrs. Hatch’s condition after her third labor? Revealing a bit of information designed to prepare the jury for Mr. Picton’s intended claim that Libby in fact resented her kids (and one what also matched our speculations from early in the case), Dr. Lawrence said that young Tommy’s birth had been difficult, and left his mother unable to bear any more children. Mr. Darrow challenged the relevance of this information and by way of reply Mr. Picton sat down, turning the witness over to his opponent. But once again, the counsel for the defense passed up his chance at cross-examination.

He did the same with Dr. Jenkins: after Mr. Picton had gone over said witness’s recollections of treating Clara Hatch-taking special care to make the jury understand that there was no connection between the bullet wound the girl had received and the fact that she hadn’t spoken in three years-it was time for the defense to take over. But Mr. Darrow just stood briefly, said, “We have no questions at this time, Your Honor,” and then sat back down.

A few comments made their way through the galleries at that, and Judge Brown began to rub the white hair on his head, looking a bit disturbed. “Mr. Darrow,” he said slowly, “I realize that you have a different way of doing things out west-but I trust you still follow the same basic rules of procedure in a criminal trial?”

Mr. Darrow smiled and stood back up, chuckling what you might call self-consciously. “I thank the court for its concern. The simple fact is, Your Honor, that the defense has no argument with the state concerning what happened immediately after the shootings. At least, not so far as these witnesses are concerned.”

The crowd seemed to find that information reassuring; as for Judge Brown, he nodded a few times and said, “Very well, Counselor. Just so long as you’re aware of what’s happening.”