And then Judge Arthur D. Arthurs arrived, chewing ruminatively on a wad of tobacco, and they all were standing on the instructions of the clerk. He sat, and Margery was asked to confirm that she was, indeed, Margery O’Hare, of the Old Cabin, Thompson’s Pass, and the clerk read out the charge against her. How did she plead?
Margery seemed to sway a little, and her eyes slid towards the public gallery.
‘Not guilty,’ she answered quietly, and there was a loud scoffing sound from the right-hand side of the court, followed by the loud banging of the judge’s gavel. He would not, repeat not, have an unruly court and nobody here was to so much as sniff without his permission. Did he make himself understood?
The crowd settled, albeit with an air of vaguely suppressed mutiny. Margery looked up at the judge and, after a moment, he nodded at her to sit down again, and that would be the extent of her animation until she was allowed to leave the courtroom.
The morning crept forward in legal increments, women fanning themselves and small children fidgeting in their seats, as the prosecuting counsel outlined the case against Margery O’Hare. It would be clear to all, he announced, in a somewhat nasal, showman’s voice, that before them was a woman brought up without morals, without concern for the decent, rightful way of doing things, without faith. Even her most visible enterprise – the so-called Packhorse Library – had proven to be a front for less savoury preoccupations, and the state would show evidence of these through evidence from witnesses shaken by examples of her moral laxity. These deficiencies in both character and behaviour had found their apotheosis one afternoon up on Arnott’s Ridge when the accused had come across the sworn enemy of her late father, and taken advantage of the isolated position and inebriation of Mr Clem McCullough to finish what their feuding descendants had started.
While this went on – and it did go on, for the prosecuting counsel loved the sound of his own voice – the reporters from Lexington and Louisville scribbled furiously in small lined notebooks, shielding their work from each other and looking up intently at every new piece of information. When he came to the bit about ‘moral laxity’, Beth called out ‘Bullcrap!’ earning herself a cuff from her father, who sat behind her, and a stern rebuke from the judge, who announced that one more word from her and she would be sitting outside in the dust for the rest of the trial. She listened to the remainder of the statement with her arms folded and the kind of expression that made Alice fear for the prosecution lawyer’s tyres.
‘You watch. Those reporters will write that these mountains run red with blood feuds and such nonsense,’ muttered Mrs Brady, from behind her. ‘They always do. Makes us sound like a bunch of savages. You won’t read a word about all the good this library – or Margery – has done.’
Kathleen sat silently on one side of Alice, Izzy the other. They listened carefully, their faces serious and still, and when he finished they exchanged looks that said they now understood what Margery was up against. Blood feuds aside, the Margery the court had described was so duplicitous, so monstrous, that if they had not known her they might have been afraid to sit just a few feet away from her too.
Margery seemed to know it. She looked deadened, as if the very thing that made her Margery had been squeezed out of her, leaving only an empty shell.
Alice wished for the hundredth time that Sven had not absented himself. Surely, no matter what she’d told him, Margery would have taken some comfort from having him there. Alice kept imagining what it must be like to be sitting in the dock, facing the end of everything she loved and held dear. It hit her then that Margery, who loved nothing better than solitude, to be left alone, unexamined, and who belonged outside, like a mule or a tree or a buzzard, was going to be in one of those tiny dark cells for ten, twenty years, if not the rest of her life.
And then she had to stand and push her way out of the gallery because she knew she was going to throw up from fear.
‘You okay?’ Kathleen arrived behind her as she spat into the dust.
‘Sorry,’ Alice said, straightening. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
Kathleen passed her a handkerchief and she wiped her mouth.
‘Izzy’s holding our seats. But we’d best not be too long. People are already eyeing ’em.’
‘I just … can’t bear it, Kathleen. Seeing her like that. Seeing the town like this. It’s like they just want the slightest excuse to think badly of her. It should be the evidence on trial, but it feels like it’s the fact that she doesn’t behave like they think she should.’
‘It’s ugly, that’s for sure.’
Alice stopped for a minute. ‘What did you just say?’
Kathleen frowned.
‘I said it’s ugly. Seeing the town close against her like this.’ Kathleen looked at her. ‘What? … What did I say?’
Ugly. Alice kicked at a stone on the ground, digging her toe in until it dislodged. There is always a way out of a situation. Might be ugly. Might leave you feeling like the earth has gone and shifted under your feet. When she looked up her face had cleared. ‘Nothing. Just something Marge once said to me. Just …’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
Kathleen held out her arm and they walked back in.
There were lengthy lawyers’ arguments behind the scenes and these blurred into a break at lunchtime, and when the women left the courtroom they didn’t know quite what to do with themselves so ended up walking slowly back towards the library in a clump, followed by Fred and Mrs Brady, deep in conversation.
‘You don’t have to go back in this afternoon, you know,’ said Izzy, who was still a little appalled by the idea of Alice throwing up in public. ‘If it’s too much for you.’
‘It was just nerves getting the better of me,’ said Alice. ‘I was the same when I was a little girl. Should have made myself eat some breakfast.’
They walked on in silence.
‘It’ll probably be better once our side gets to speak,’ Izzy said.
‘Yeah. Sven’s fancy lawyer will put them straight,’ said Beth.
‘Of course he will,’ said Alice.
But none of them sounded convinced.
Day Two, it turned out, was not much better. The prosecution team outlined the autopsy report on Clem McCullough. The victim, a fifty-seven-year-old man, had died from a traumatic head injury consistent with a blunt instrument to the back of the head. He also had suffered facial bruising.
‘Such as, for example, could be caused by a heavy hard-backed book?’
‘That could be the case, yes,’ said the physician who had conducted the autopsy.
‘Or a bar fight?’ suggested Mr Turner, the defence lawyer. The physician thought for a moment. ‘Well, yes, that too. But he was some way from a bar.’
The area around the body had not been carefully examined, given the remoteness of the trail. Two of the sheriff’s men had carried it down the mountain track, a journey that had taken several hours, and a late snowfall had covered the ground where it had lain, but there was photographic evidence of blood, and possibly hoof-prints.
Mr McCullough had not owned a horse or mule.
The prosecution counsel then interviewed their witnesses. There was old Nancy, who was pushed again and again to confirm that her first statement had stated clearly that she had heard Margery up on the ridge, followed by the sound of an altercation.
‘But I didn’t say it like you’ve made it sound,’ she protested, her hand reaching for her hair. She turned to look at the judge. ‘They twisted my words all this way and that. I know Margery. I know she would no more murder a man in cold blood than she would … I don’t know … bake a cake.’
This prompted laughter in the courtroom and a furious outburst from the judge, and Nancy put both hands to her face, guessing, probably correctly, that even that simile would add to the idea that Margery was somehow transgressive, that in her non-baking habits she went against the laws of nature.