Belle Cora: A Novel Page 59

  “Oh, don’t worry about Mr. Russell; he’s the soul of discretion, ain’t you, Tom?” Her companion nodded. “You see?” said Maria Knight. “Let me guess what you’d like. You’d like me to say that I saw a pistol in General Richardson’s hand. I could say that.”

  “If that’s what you saw,” I said, “that’s what you ought to say.”

  “Oh, I didn’t see anything of the sort. But for five thousand dollars, I could say I had.” With the nail of her pinky finger, in a gesture that she almost succeeded in making refined and ladylike, she scraped a caraway seed from between her teeth.

  I spoke carefully. “I know that Richardson drew his pistol, and Charley pushed the pistol up, and it was evening. People could make mistakes. You could realize that you made a mistake. As for the other thing you mentioned, all I can say is, I’m the friend of anyone who helps Charley, the foe of anyone who hurts him, and I have a long memory.”

  “Well,” she said, after a while. “Well, I never. Come, Thomas.” Keeping her back very straight, she rose from her chair.

  “I don’t mean to be unfriendly,” I said. “I want you for a friend.”

  She turned. She said, “My friendship has a price.”

  I smiled. She blushed. I repeated my vague promises. They weren’t enough for her. “You shouldn’t have treated me this way,” she said. “I’ve got a long memory, too.”

  It is my belief that she had other resources. I was not the only one with money.

  AT MY SUGGESTION, LEWIS SPOKE to Abner Mosely in the Cosmopolitan and nebulously alluded to the rumors of my generosity. People said that I was willing to pay men to change their testimony. Had Mosely heard that? Did he ever daydream about it? “I daydream of Charles Cora going out dancing in a hemp necktie,” said Mosely with a well-lubricated smile.

  Well, Lewis said then, what did he think of the rumors that Belle Cora was willing to pay ten thousand dollars to the man who killed Abner Mosely?

  “There ain’t no such rumor and ain’t going to be. She knows that if I’m killed they’ll bring back the Vigilance Committee, and Charley will be hanged for sure.”

  We were afraid he was right. Still, we discussed it. Lewis wanted to take a personal hand, and long after I had definitely decided that it would be too dangerous to murder Mosely, I thought, simply for my amusement, about how it might be done.

  CHRISTMAS NEARED. MEN WALKED THROUGH the streets carrying bread, plucked turkeys and geese, apples, and small evergreens. Lewis, Jocelyn, Edward, Ned McGowan, and I spent Christmas Day with Charley in his cell; and we were there together again on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

  On Thursday, January 3, the selection of the jury began, with four lawyers for the People and four lawyers for Charles Cora. Our lawyers insisted that I stay clear of the courtroom. I could do no good there. The prosecutors need only glance in my direction to remind the jury that Charley was a gambler who lived in a brothel. I followed events through the newspapers and conferences with McDougall or Baker. Every day, as Charley was moved under heavy guard from the county jail to a carriage that would take him to the court, I stood on Broadway to greet him, and we both tried to look cheerful.

  The jurors were isolated from the rest of the world, and were never supposed to separate during the trial. They were all moved into the Railroad House, a three-story hotel with entrances on Clay Street and Commercial Street. Three or four would be lodged together in a room, and sheriff’s deputies would sleep with them. They would not be permitted to leave, even to visit their families. When I first heard this, I borrowed a carriage (so that it would not be identified as mine) and examined the Railroad House. It was exposed on every side and would be impossible to leave or enter without detection. On the other hand, it had a staff: cooks, waiters, maids. They did not live at the Railroad House. They had to come and go. Perhaps some of my people could become acquainted with them. And the sheriff’s deputies. Most of them were very poorly paid.

  THE TRIAL PROPER BEGAN. One after another, dozens of witnesses swore on the Bible, stated their names and occupations, when they had come to California, and what part of the States they were from. Several had known either Richardson or Charley back east. To read this testimony now is to be reminded of the unusual conditions of San Francisco back then: strangers from faraway places were mingled here, retaining their old accents, beliefs, and grudges. There had been another life back home, which some of us would rather forget, and right here, just a few years earlier, we had lived under special rules that were not easy to explain to more recent arrivals.

  Several men who knew Richardson, including some of his friends, admitted that he was extremely disagreeable when drunk, and went about armed with a knife and usually two pistols. Others testified that he was a knight errant. Our case was hurt when both of our witnesses to the shooting admitted, on cross-examination, that they had gone to my house to talk to me about their testimony. It did not matter that they had come of their own accord, and it would do no good to call me in as a witness and say I hadn’t bribed them. What else would anyone expect me to say?

  Abner Mosely repeated the testimony he had given at the inquest. Later, Baker called several witnesses as to what manner of man Mosely was, and made him look pretty bad.

  Maria Knight’s evidence about the shooting was not important. It was on cross-examination, when Baker tried to get her to admit that she had visited my house, that she ruined us. She said that she had been “tricked” into coming. I had begged her to come, and two prominent men had assured her it was safe, and in her version she spoke with me alone, with Russell waiting in another room; she said that I had threatened her life.

  She loved being up there, testifying. Today, whenever I see the work of a “still life” painter, who struggles to interest us in a chipped cup, a hunk of bread, and a bunch of dusty translucent grapes, I think how much simpler his task would be if he could say these items were exhibits in a murder trial. The trial is a beam from the clouds, selecting a few trivial objects and telling us that, despite appearances, they’re important—a stupid quarrel in a saloon, how many drinks each man had and who bought them, the position of a street lamp, a young woman with a dime-novel imagination. Maria Knight, in her best shoes and best shawl, turned her face up happily in the sunny beam and danced.

  Colonel Baker had not expected this. He must have felt as if he’d stepped into a bear trap, and he was obviously rattled. He didn’t press her on the weakness in her story—what earthly purpose could she have in coming to my house if not to ask me for money?

  When the prosecution questioned her again, she described my parlor and also one of my serving trays, but on the tray, instead of tea and cake, she put a single ominous glass of wine I kept urging her to drink. She told me she was an abstainer; I brought her tea—again, just one suspicious serving, which she refused (but really she had devoured an entire seed cake and tossed three cups of tea down her gullet, just because they didn’t cost her anything). “Foiled in her two attempts to poison me,” said Miss Knight, “she told me a pathetic story of her childhood.” Then, her thrilling tale continued, the folding doors of the parlor were thrown open and she saw two men, one of whom had a pistol in his hand and asked if now she would change her testimony. “I was afraid for my life; one of them cried out to know of Belle Cora if the doors and windows of the house were all barred; I then asked for Mr. Russell, who had accompanied me to the house, but they would not allow him to come in; the men however permitted me to leave when they saw how frightened I was.”

  After Maria Knight spoke, I felt betrayed and desperate. I had kept within the law, and where had it got me?

  LIX

  I TALKED IT OVER WITH JEPTHA. We discussed it in our squalid Sacramento hotel room, in the bed where we betrayed his half-mad wife and my gambler lover currently on trial for murder.

  Whoever was there before us had spat so much tobacco juice on the carpet that at my request Jeptha rolled it up and put it out in the hall, and washed his hands i
n the basin afterward. In the meantime, it began to rain outside, wetting the floor beneath the window. Jeptha shut the window, and we lit a lamp and listened to the hiss outside and the drumbeat on the roof. For a few minutes before we had slaked our thirst for each other and for a long time after, I questioned Jeptha about the opinions of his congregation, and the prominent men he knew who were connected with the city’s schools and charity hospitals and the several boards where he was a trustee—for Jeptha knew a lot of important people. So did I, some of the same ones, and between the two of us we had a rounded picture.

  From the way he had been musing about his congregation and their opinions, I knew he was building up to something. He sat beside me in the bed with his head flung back against the dirty plaster and said, “Maria Knight hurt you with them.”

  Was he asking me for a confession? I touched his shoulder, inviting his glance. “She came to me. They all came to me, all the witnesses, with their hands out, but I knew I was being watched. I won’t lie. I’d have bribed them if I thought I could get away with it. But I was good, and look what’s happened.”

  By then the rain had stopped. On the other side of the thin wall behind our bed, someone coughed and opened a window. Jeptha said quietly, “I know one of the jurors.”

  I became very still. He had known this an hour ago. Why was he telling me now?

  “Albert Patterson. It’s been on my mind, because he’s in my congregation; I know him, I know his wife. He’s an ardent Know-Nothing, and before the trial he said—he told his wife—that it would be a pleasure to see this Italian gambler hang.”

  “Oh,” I said, laying my head on his chest. Giving it some more thought, I said, “Tell me about him. What’s he like?”

  I couldn’t see his face, but from his voice and the pauses I knew there was something more, and that to confide it he had to overcome his own reluctance. “He works for Pacific Mail, came in ’51. His family is here. I know his wife, too.”

  He had mentioned this already. “What about his wife?”

  “I respect her. She’s a good mother. From a prominent Philadelphia family. Her brother is a clergyman there. Her father is wealthy, and Patterson’s connections are mainly through her. They had a maid. Albert Patterson and his wife.”

  “Had, no longer have?” I asked, wondering why a maid was worth mentioning.

  “They still do, but the maid they had quit, and she went to work for us—for Agnes and me. So, in addition to knowing a little bit about him from Martha—the wife—I know something from the maid.”

  What was he saying? Did I dare believe it? “And what is it that you know?” I waited for an answer. Several seconds passed. I sat up and regarded him. “Jeptha, you’ve got to tell me if there’s anything that can help.”

  “And I tell you, and you use what I’ve told you to blackmail a juror.”

  “Yes. A juror who lied with his hand on the Bible when he said his mind wasn’t made up, so he shouldn’t be on the jury in the first place. To help an innocent man. Yes, if I can get to him at the Railroad House—and I think I can.”

  He put his hand on his brow.

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Oh, I hate your innocence. This is about keeping a man’s neck out of a noose—the neck of a man we’ve been betraying for over a year. And would he hesitate for one second if he could save your life at no cost to himself? I promise you he wouldn’t—not even if he knew what we were doing here! That’s the kind of man he is! Should we let him die to prove we’re better than those who want to kill him? Let him die so we can congratulate ourselves on our honesty? Don’t be childish. You knew that once you’d told me this much I’d insist on knowing it all.”

  “You’re right,” he said, massaging his brow and rubbing his eyes wearily. “You’re right. Once I brought it up with you, the decision was made. It’s ridiculous for me to be coy. I won’t be coy. It’s too bad, if I’m to be a villain, that I can’t do it with more enthusiasm. You know just what you’re willing to do. I’m always going to be a Hamlet in these things, afraid of being worse than I need to be, and always trying to cover myself with a little fig leaf of principle. So you’ll have to forgive me if I hem and haw a bit before I tell you.”

  “What is it? The maid? He misbehaved with the maid.”

  There was one small last pause as he took what was for him a leap across a treacherous gulf. “Yes, and Martha knows. But he doesn’t know that she knows; he would be very surprised to learn that she does, because he is completely in her power. He depends on her family, who don’t like him and help him only for her sake. Besides, he embezzles money from his firm and speculates with it, and she knows that, too, and could send him to prison, though she doesn’t, for the sake of the children. She wouldn’t harm him, but he doesn’t realize that.”

  “She knows all? Martha? Martha is the wife.”

  “Yes, but, as I said, he doesn’t know she knows.”

  I was too nervous to stay in the bed. One firm vote for acquittal was enough to hang the jury, and this information (that Patterson was not only an adulterer, but an embezzler) could bind him absolutely—if we could reach him. I put on my gown and my coat, put some wood in the stove, and paced the room, while Jeptha watched. I was thinking of the Railroad House, and how to get to it. I talked about it, as if soliciting Jeptha’s advice, but really so as to feel a little less lonely in my scheming. I had already bribed one of the sheriff’s deputies. Perhaps I would get him to pass Patterson a note. But the deputy would be sure to read the note and use it as blackmail on his own behalf, which would defeat my purposes.

  At last Jeptha said, “Hire someone to rent a room in the Railroad House and get me the key to it. I will go in and wait there—no one will connect me with you. Let the sheriff’s deputy bring Patterson to that room. I’ll talk to him, and I’ll convince him. The man who rents the room won’t see me. The sheriff’s deputy won’t see me. If it is done right, and that is for you to arrange, only Patterson will know that I have met with him. Only you and Patterson and I will know what has been said.”

  I had been staring at him in astonishment throughout most of this speech. I sat on the bed and touched his arm. “You know I wasn’t thinking of this, don’t you, Jeptha? When I discussed the difficulties, it was only to have your opinion. I didn’t mean to involve you so personally.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I’d spare you if I could. But what you’ve said makes very good sense.”

  “I know. It’s all right.”

  “Oh, thank you, Jeptha, thank you.” I kissed him, and soon my coat and gown were shed and we were enjoying each other again.

  Because we understood each other thoroughly, I did not have to say that I knew that just in telling me about this juror he had damaged himself, breaking profoundly with his deepest beliefs. To take it further and do the dirty work was to sacrifice his honor at the altar of our love. I was moved beyond words, and I would have loved Jeptha more if I did not already love him beyond measure.

  THE TRIAL CONCLUDED WITH TWO SUMMATIONS by the prosecution and two by the defense. Only Colonel Baker’s speech, the longest he ever gave, is remembered: the rhetorical part of it, omitting his discussion of the evidence, may be found in Masterpieces of E. D. Baker, edited (With Glances at the Orator and His Times) by Oscar T. Shuck and published in San Francisco by the Murdock Press in 1899. I thought Baker did a good job of alerting the jury to the contradictions in the statements of the witnesses who had testified against Charley. He painted an unflattering picture of Richardson’s character—true enough, God knows.

  As for his remarks concerning me, I have always had mixed feelings about them. I did not think he ought to have brought me into the speech. His client was Charley. We needed a speech that would bring an acquittal, not one that would exonerate me or add to Baker’s fame. I wondered if, vain of his gifts, Baker thought he had something new to say about golden-hearted prostitutes, and simply could not resist the topic.

  However, today, having s
pent five decades hiding my past and denying my reviled name, I cannot read his words without having to dab my eyes with a handkerchief. When you read them, remember that Baker’s speeches were all extemporaneous and he never even made a single note beforehand.

  “I will now proceed to grapple with the great bugbear of the case. The complaint, on their side, is that Belle Cora has tampered with the witnesses. The prosecuting attorney has chosen to declare that the line of defense was concocted in a place which he has been pleased to designate as a haunt of sensuality. In plain English, Belle Cora is helping her friend as much as she can. It may appear strange to him, but I am inclined to admit the plain, naked fact; and in the Lord’s name, who else should help him? Who else is there whose duty it is to help him? If it were not for her, he would not have a friend on earth. This howling, raging public opinion would banish every friend, even every man who once lived near him. The associates of his life have fled in the day of trouble. It is a woman of base profession, of more than easy virtue, of malign fame, of a degraded caste—it is one poor, weak, feeble, and, if you like it, wicked woman—to her alone he owes his ability to employ counsel to present his defense.

  “What we want to know is, what have they against that? What we want to know is, why don’t they admire it? What we want to know is, why don’t they admit the supremacy of the divine spark in the merest human bosom? The history of this case is, I suppose, that this man and this woman have formed a mutual attachment, not sanctioned, if you like, by the usages of society—thrown out of the pale of society—if you like, not sanctioned by the rites of the church. It is but a trust in each other, a devotion to the last, amid all the dangers of the dungeon and all the terrors of the scaffold. They were bound together by a tie which angels might not blush to approve. A man who can attach to him a woman, however base in heart and corrupt in life, is not all bad. A woman who can maintain her trust, who can waste her money like water to stand by her friend, amid the darkest clouds that can gather, that woman cannot be all evil; and if, in vice, and degradation, and pollution, and infamy, she rises so far above it all as to vindicate her original nature, I must confess that I honor this trait of fidelity.