The Glass Village (9 page)

“Too good for him, I say,” bellowed Rebecca Hemus. “Too good for him!”

“And that Elizabeth Sheare runnin' to make him a cup of tea,” said Emily Berry venomously. “Tea! Poison's what I'd give him. And gettin' him dry clothes, like the church was a hotel. Peter Berry, you get on home and take those wet things off!”

“Wouldn't it be better if you all went home?” asked the Judge evenly. “This is no place for women and children.”

“What did he say?” shouted old Selina Hackett. “Who went home? At a time like this!”

“We have as much right here as you men, Judge,” said Prue Plummer sharply. “Nobody's going to budge till that murdering foreigner gets what's coming to him. Do you realize it was only by the grace of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost that I wasn't the one he murdered? How many times I told Aunt Fanny,
‘Don't
take in every dirty stranger who comes scraping at your kitchen door,' I told her. ‘Some day,' I said, ‘some day, Aunt Fanny, you'll let in the wrong one.' The poor dear wouldn't ever listen. And now look at her!”

Mathilda Scott said in a low voice, “I'd like to get my hands on him. Once, just once.”

Judge Shinn looked at her as if he had never seen her before.

Hackett and the Hemuses appeared on the church steps. As the Judge led the way through the group of women and children to meet them, Johnny noticed Mert Isbel's daughter Sarah and her child hanging about the edge of the crowd. The woman's face was lively. But the liveliness died as her father pushed by her. She drew away, gripping her little girl's hand.

“Burney, what's the meaning of this?” cried Judge Shinn. “Locking him in a coalbin!”

“Got no jail to lock him in, Judge,” said the constable.

“He shouldn't be here at all! Have you notified Coroner Barn-well yet?”

“I got to talk that over with Doc Cushman. Doc's waitin' for us over at Aunt Fanny's.”

“All Dr. Cushman can legally do is bring in a finding that death was caused by a criminal act, and report that finding at once to Coroner Barnwell in Cudbury. From that point on, the case is in Barnwell's hands. He will either summon a coroner's jury of six electors—”

“Judge.” Hubert Hemus's gaunt face was granite, only the jaws moving, like millstones grinding away at the words to come. “For ninety-one years Fanny Adams belonged to the town. This is town business. Ain't nobody goin' to tell us how to run town business. Now you're an important judge and you know the law and how things ought to be done, and we'll be obliged for your advice as a judge and a neighbor. We'll let Coroner Barnwell come down here and make his findin's. If he wants a coroner's jury, why, we got six qualified electors right here. We'll do everythin' legal. Ain't nobody goin' to deprive this murderin' furrin trash of his legal rights. He'll have his lawyer and he'll have his chance to defend himself.
But he ain't leavin' Shinn Corners, no matter what.
”

A murmur formed behind them like an oncoming wave. The sound tickled Johnny's scalp. He fought down another attack of nausea.

Hube Hemus's cheerless glance went out over his neighbors. “We got to get this organized, neighbors,” the First Selectman said. “Got to set a day and night guard over the prisoner. Got to set guards against outside meddlin'. Got to see that the milkin's done—we're a full hour late now!—got lots to do. Right now I b'lieve the big boys better get on home and attend to the cows. Mert, you can send Calvin Waters back in your wagon with Sarah and the child to do your milkin'; we need you here. We men stay and figger out what we got to do. The women with small children can take 'em home, give 'em somethin' to eat, and put 'em to bed. Bigger children can watch over 'em. The women can get together and fix a community supper …”

Somehow, the Judge and Johnny found themselves shut off. They stood about on the periphery, watching and listening, but groups fell silent and drifted apart at their approach.

“It must be me,” Johnny said to the Judge. “Shinn or no Shinn, I'm an outsider. Wouldn't it make it easier all around, Judge, if I packed and got out?”

“You'd like that, wouldn't you?” said the Judge scornfully.

“What do you mean?” said Johnny.

The Judge looked suddenly quite old. “Nothing. Nothing, Johnny. It has nothing to do with you. It's me. I've sat on the bench in Cudbury for too many years to be
en rapport
with Shinn Corners. Hube Hemus has passed the word around.”

It was from Ferriss Adams that they learned what had happened in the cellar of the church when the prisoner was brought down to the coalbin. Adams had the story from Samuel Sheare, whom he had sought out to discuss arrangements for Fanny Adams's funeral. Mr. Sheare had been present in the cellar; he had insisted on providing the prisoner with dry clothing—the man's teeth were clacking from immersion and chill. When he brought the clothing, the minister had asked Constable Hackett and the Hemuses to leave him alone with the prisoner; they had refused and ordered the man to strip. Either he misunderstood or he understood too well—doubled over in agony still, the man had resisted furiously. The Hemus twins had torn the clothes from his body.

In his jacket Burney Hackett found a paper identifying him as one Josef Kowalczyk—“Mr. Sheare spelled it for me,” Ferriss Adams said, “it ends in c-z-y-k, which Mr. Sheare says the fellow pronounces ‘chick'”—aged forty-two, a Polish immigrant admitted to the United States under a special refugee quota in 1947. They had also found, in a dirty knotted handkerchief tied to a rope slung around Kowalczyk's naked waist, a hundred and twenty-four dollars.

“And that's the clincher,” snapped the Cudbury lawyer. “Because Mr. Sheare says that yesterday, at Aunt Fanny's open house, she took him into her kitchen for a private talk. She told him she'd noticed Elizabeth Sheare's summer dresses were pretty shabby, and she wanted him to buy his wife a new one. She reached up to the top shelf of her old pine cabinet, where she's always kept her row of spice jars, and she took down the cinnamon jar. There was some change in it and a roll of bills, When Mr. Sheare protested, Aunt Fanny said to him, ‘Don't ye worry none about my runnin' short, Mr. Sheare. You know I keep some cash here for emergencies. There's a hundred and forty-nine dollars and change in this jar, and if I can't give Elizabeth Sheare a new dress out of it without her knowin', what in the land's sake can I do with it?' And she peeled off two tens and a five and pressed them into Mr. Sheare's hand. A hundred and forty-nine dollars in Aunt Fanny's cinnamon bank only the day before,” said Ferriss Adams, “she gave twenty-five of it to Samuel Sheare, there's
nothing
left in Aunt Fanny's cinnamon jar—they've already checked that—and here's a hundred and twenty-four dollars hidden under Kowalczyk's undershirt … smelling of cinnamon. It's what the Judge and I as lawyers, Mr. Shinn,” said Adams dryly, “call circumstantial evidence, but I'd say those are pretty damning circumstances. Wouldn't you, Judge?”

“As presumptive of theft, Ferriss, yes,” said the Judge.

“Judge, he's guilty as hell and you know it!”

“Not legally, I don't. Ferriss, are you staying around the village this evening?”

“I'll have to. I've got to see about the undertaking arrangements. As soon as the coroner gets here and gives us a release—it'll have to be tonight!—I'm having Cy Moody of Comfort pick up the body. Why, Judge?”

“Because, Ferriss,” said Judge Shinn slowly, “I don't like one little bit what's going on. I've got to appeal to you as a practicing lawyer sworn to uphold the laws of the state to disregard your personal feelings, Ferriss, and help me stop … whatever's brewing. As Fanny Adams's kin you ought to be able to exercise some sobering influence on these upset people. Tonight may be crucial, Ferriss. I'll stay out of the way. Will you try to talk them into handing Kowalczyk over to the sheriff or the state police?”

“Hube Hemus is the man,” muttered the Cudbury lawyer. “The tail that wags your wacky community. Why is Hube acting so God-Almighty, Judge? What's Hube's beef?”

“It's compounded of many things, Ferriss. But principally, I think, the murder of his brother Laban before the war.”

“The Gonzoli case! I'd clean forgot about that. Cudbury jury acquitted him, didn't it? Then I'm afraid, Judge,” said Adams, shaking his head, “you're asking for the impossible.”

“Do your best, Ferriss.” The Judge squeezed Adams's arm and turned away. He was shivering.

“I think, your honor,” said Johnny, “I'd better get you into your house before you go off on a pneumonia kick. Did you ever get a Japanese rubdown? March!”

But the Judge did not smile.

They sat on the Shinn porch that night and watched the arrival of Coroner Barnwell. They watched the coroner's excited gestures, the eddy of villagers, the arrival of the Comfort undertaker's truck, the departure of Fanny Adams's remains. With the crickets shrilling, the peepers roaring, the mosquitoes humming, the millers and beetles cracking against Shinn Corners's sole street light, outside Peter Berry's store, the weird performance on the village streets that night was played to fitting music. Through it all the Hemus twins flitted about the church grounds like spirits of darkness, each armed with a shotgun. One patrolled the front yard of the church, the other guarded the rear.

When, at ten o'clock, the Cudbury County coroner strode from the Town Hall to the intersection and began to cross Shinn Road to his parked car, Judge Shinn called softly.

“Barnwell, come up here a moment.”

The heavy figure looked startled. Barnwell hurried over the green and across the Judge's lawn. “I thought they'd strung you up or something, Judge Shinn! What the devil's come over this one-horse agglomeration of two-footed he- and she-asses?”

“That's what I want to talk to you about. Sit down, Barnwell. By the way, meet a young cousin of mine, John Shinn.”

“Heard the Judge had a long-lost relative floating around town.” Coroner Barnwell groped for Johnny's hand and wrung it. “Fine mess you've stepped into. Judge, what's going on in Shinn Corners? Do you know they won't give up this fellow Kowalczyk? Won't give him up!” The coroner sounded baffled. “Why?”

“I'm afraid there are a great many reasons, all pretty complicated,” sighed Judge Shinn, “but the only fact that need concern us at the moment, Barnwell, is the fact of their refusal. What happened over at Town Hall? Did you have a coroner's jury?”

“Yes, and they brought in a perfectly proper finding from the testimony and evidence. Kowalczyk obviously must be held for arraignment. But then they handed me my hat and politely asked me to get the hell out of Shinn Corners. I'm still flabbergasted. Of course, I'll run these local yokels of yours clean back to their primitive privies as soon as I can get some cops down here—”

“That's exactly what I wish you wouldn't do, Barnwell. Not right away, anyway.”

“Why not?” The coroner was astonished.

“Because there'll be a heap of trouble.”

“Who cares!” said Barnwell violently.

“I care,” said the Judge. “And so, I think, Barnwell, will you. I'm not exaggerating the danger. There's real trouble ahead. Ask an outsider's opinion. Johnny's an ex-Intelligence officer, a trouble-shooter of experience! Johnny, what do you think?”

“I think,” said Johnny, “that to bring armed men into this village in its present frame of mind—any armed men, Coroner Barnwell—is to invite a nastier mess than anything New England's seen since Daniel Shays's rebellion.”

“Well, I swan to Marthy,” said Barnwell sardonically, “I do believe you two picklepusses are serious. I'll tell you, Judge. I've got my duty, too, though it's hardly my place to remind you of it, since in our beloved state county coroners are appointed by the judges of the Superior Court, on whose altitudinous bench you've parked your fanny with such distinction for so long. In other words, Judge, you share the awful responsibility of my appointment. Consequently, you have a vested ethical interest in seeing that I carry out my duties faithfully and to the last jot and tittle of the law. My duty is to secure custody of the accused, Josef Kowalczyk, and see him lodged in the sacred precincts of our county jail, where the sonofabitch belongs. I'm not going to do it personally; I'm far too sinister for that. Me, I'm going to toss this squishy little old punkin into the mitts of those whose duty in turn it is to assist me in performing mine—to wit, the police power. Rebellion!” Barnwell tramped off the porch, snickering. “Go to bed and sleep it off,” he called back; and he drove off up Shinn Road towards Cudbury with a flirt of his exhaust.

After Barnwell's departure, the Judge and Johnny went back to their silent watch. They saw the villagers emerge from the Town Hall, straggle up Four Corners Road, stand about the intersection, disperse, regroup. They heard arrangements discussed for the milking and other farm activities that had to go on. Chores were to be taken care of on a communal basis, by women as well as men; cars and weapons were to be pooled. So-and-So was to tend the stock at the Pangman barn, this boy was to relieve Calvin Waters at the Isbel farm, that one was to run over to the Scotts' while Drakeley was on duty in the village. They saw Ferriss Adams let into the Adams house by Burney Hackett, and old Merton Isbel being given a gun to patrol the Adams property. They saw Hube Hemus and Orville Pangman relieve Tommy and Dave Hemus on the church grounds, and the twins roar down Shinn Road past the Shinn porch in their father's car, presumably to go home for a few hours' sleep. Plans were made for regular four-hour watches, with each man and ablebodied boy of Shinn Corners assigned his place and time. Older children of the immediate vicinity, like Dickie Berry and Cynthia Hackett, ran here and there on mysterious errands. Kitchens were lit up until past midnight, as Millie Pangman and Prue Plummer and Emily Berry busied themselves making sandwiches and pots of coffee.