‘Margery O’Hare had a baby?’ The gun lowered an inch. ‘Who’d she marry?’
They exchanged awkward glances.
‘Well, she ain’t exactly married.’
‘But that doesn’t mean nothing,’ Izzy called hurriedly. ‘Doesn’t mean she isn’t a good person.’
Beth brought her horse a few steps closer towards the house, and held up a saddlebag. ‘You want some books, Miss McCullough? For you or your sister? We got recipe books, storybooks, all kinds of books. Lots of families up in the mountains happy to take them. You don’t have to pay, and we’ll bring you new ones when you like.’
Kathleen shook her head at Beth and mouthed, I don’t think she can read.
Alice, anxious, tried to talk over them: ‘Miss McCullough, we’re truly, truly sorry about your father. You must have loved him very much. And we’re really sorry to trouble you with this matter. We wouldn’t be here unless we were desperate to help our friend –’
‘I ain’t sorry,’ the girl said.
Alice swallowed the rest of her sentence. Her shoulders slumped a little. Beth’s mouth closed in dismay.
‘Well, I appreciate it’s natural you would harbour ill-feelings towards Margery but I would beg you just to hear –’
‘Not her.’ Verna’s voice hardened. ‘I ain’t sorry about what happened to my pa.’
The women looked at each other, confused. The gun lowered slowly another inch, and then disappeared.
‘You the Kathleen used to have braids pinned upside your head?’
‘That’s me.’
‘You rode all the way up here from Baileyville?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Kathleen.
There was a brief pause.
‘Then you’d best come in.’
As the librarians watched, the rough wooden door slid open a fraction, and then, after a moment, opened a little wider, creaking on its hinges. And there, for the first time, in the gloom, they saw the twenty-year-old figure of Verna McCullough, dressed in a faded blue dress with patches on the pockets and a headscarf knotted over her hair, her sister moving in the shadows behind her.
There was a short silence while they all took in what was in front of them.
‘Well, shit,’ said Izzy, under her breath.
26
Alice was first in the queue for the courthouse on Monday morning. She had barely slept and her eyes were sore and gritty. She had brought fresh-baked cornbread to the jail earlier in the morning, but Officer Dulles glanced down at the tin and observed apologetically that Margery wasn’t eating. ‘Barely touched a thing over the weekend.’ He looked genuinely concerned.
‘You take it anyway. Just in case you can get her to eat something later.’
‘You didn’t come yesterday.’
‘I was busy.’
He frowned at the abruptness of her answer, but plainly decided that things were off-kilter enough in the town that week without him questioning it further, and headed back down to his cells.
Alice took her place at the front of the public gallery and regarded the crowd. No Kathleen, no Fred. Izzy slid in beside her, then Beth, smoking the tail end of a cigarette that she stubbed out under her feet.
‘Heard anything?’
‘Not yet,’ said Alice.
And then she startled. There, two rows back, sat Sven, his face sombre, and his eyes shadowed, as if he hadn’t slept for weeks. He kept his eyes to the front and his hands on his knees. There was something in the rigidity of his bearing that suggested a man working hard to keep himself contained, and the sight of him made her swallow painfully. She flinched as Izzy’s hand reached across and squeezed her own, and she returned the pressure, trying to keep her breath steady in her chest.
A minute later Margery was led in, her head down, and her gait slow. She stood, her expression unreadable, no longer even bothering to meet anybody else’s eye. ‘C’mon, Marge,’ she heard Beth mutter beside her.
And then Judge Arthurs entered the courtroom and everybody rose.
‘Miss Margery O’Hare here is a victim of unhappy circumstance. She was, if you like, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now only God will ever know the truth of what happened on the top of that mountain, but we do know that it is only the flimsiest of evidence that takes a library book, one which by all accounts may have travelled halfway across Lee County, and places it near a body that may have come to rest some six months earlier.’ The defence counsel looked up as the doors at the back opened and everyone swivelled in their seats to see Kathleen Bligh march in, sweaty and a little breathless.
‘Excuse me. I’m very sorry. Excuse me.’ She ran to the front of the court where she stooped to speak to Mr Turner. He glanced behind him and then stood, one hand on his tie, as the people in the court murmured their surprise.
‘Your Honour? We have a witness who would very much like to say something before the court.’
‘Can it wait?’
‘Your Honour, this has a material bearing on the case.’
The judge sighed. ‘Approach the bench please, Counsels.’
The two men stood at the front. Neither attempted to lower their voices much, one from urgency and the other from frustration, so the court got to hear pretty much everything that was said.
‘It’s the daughter,’ said Mr Turner.
‘What daughter?’ said the judge.
‘McCullough’s daughter. Verna.’
The prosecution counsel glanced behind him and shook his head. ‘Your Honour, we have had no prior notice of such a witness and I object in the strongest terms to the introduction of such at so late –’
The judge chewed ruminatively. ‘Did the sheriff’s men not go up to Arnott’s Ridge to try to talk to the girl?’
The prosecution counsel stammered, ‘Well, y-yes. But she wouldn’t come down. She hasn’t left that house in several years, according to those familiar with the family.’
The judge leaned back in his chair. ‘Then I would say if this is the victim’s daughter, possibly the last witness to see him alive, and she is now content to make her way down into the town to answer questions about his last day, then she may well have information pertinent to the case, wouldn’t you agree, Mr Howard?’
The prosecution counsel glanced behind him again. Van Cleve was straining forward in his seat, his mouth compressed with displeasure.
‘Yes, Your Honour.’
‘Good. I will hear the witness.’ He waved a finger.
Kathleen and the lawyer spoke for a minute in hushed voices, and then she ran to the back of the court.
‘When you’re ready, Mr Turner.’
‘Your Honour, the defence calls Miss Verna McCullough, daughter of Clem McCullough. Miss McCullough? If you could make your way to the witness box? I would be much obliged.’
There was a hum of interest. People strained in their seats. The door opened at the back of the court, revealing Kathleen, her arm through that of a younger woman, who walked a little behind her. And as the court watched in silence, Verna McCullough made her way slowly and deliberately to the front of the courtroom, every stride an apparent effort. Her hand rested on the small of her back and her belly sat low and huge in front of her.
A murmur of shock, and a second wave of exclamation as the same thought occurred to each person, went up around the room.
‘You live at Arnott’s Ridge?’
Verna had held her hair back with a bobby pin and now fiddled with it, as if it were out of place. Her voice emerged as a hoarse whisper. ‘Yes, sir. With my sister. And before that our father.’