“Did you see any evidence whatever behind the barn that logs had been recently split?”
“Nary a splinter.”
“Did you see any sign whatsoever, either in the lean-to or anywhere else about the premises, either during that first quick search on finding the body or at any time subsequently, of freshly split firewood?”
“No, sir.”
“Your witness, Judge Webster.”
Andrew Webster (and this time, Johnny noted, the tip of his thorny old nose was white with determination): “Constable Hackett, did you examine defendant’s clothing on the afternoon of Saturday last, July fifth?”
“Me and Hube Hemus. It was when Mr. Sheare come down with some dry duds for the prisoner and we removed his wet ones.”
“Did you find any bloodstains on defendant’s clothing?”
“Well, no, though that’s what I was lookin’ for. But they were soakin’ wet and plastered with mud and sludge from the swamp. Any blood’d got on his clothes or hands had been washed out.”
“Ignoring the totally unwarranted inference, Constable,” snapped Andy Webster, “didn’t it occur to you as an officer of the law that there is such a thing as chemical analysis of clothing, which might definitely have established the presence — or absence — of bloodstains even on wet, muddy clothing?”
“Object!”
“Overruled,” said Judge Shinn gently.
“Never occurred to me,” Burney Hackett said in a sulky tone. “Anyway, we got no facil’ties for such things—”
“There is a modern scientific laboratory in Odham regularly used by nearby Cudbury County police departments for just such purposes, is there not, Constable Hackett?”
“This isn’t proper cross—” began Ferriss Adams automatically. Then he shook his head and shut up.
“Constable, what happened to the clothing you tore from the defendant’s body?”
“Elizabeth Sheare cleaned ’em—”
“In other words, it is now impossible to establish the presence or absence of bloodstains. Constable Hackett, did you attempt to bring out any fingerprints on the murder weapon?”
Burney Hackett’s underdeveloped jaw waggled. “Fingerprints... Heck no, Judge Webster. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout fingerprints. Anyway, the poker was too messed up—”
“You did not send the poker to a qualified police or other laboratory for fingerprint examination?”
“No...”
“Have you handled the poker since Saturday, Constable?”
“Well, I did, yes. So did Hube Hemus, Mr. Adams, Orville Pangman... I guess most everybody’s handled it since Saturday.” Hackett’s large ears were now a bright, pulsing red.
Ferriss Adams’s glance appealed to Judge Shinn. But the Judge merely sat judge-like.
“One thing more, Constable. For the record, where were you at two-thirteen o’clock Saturday afternoon?”
Johnny relaxed. He had asked Andrew Webster to establish the whereabouts of every witness at the time of the murder, on any pretext, and he had begun to think the old man had forgotten.
Hackett was startled. “Me? I’d drove over to Cudbury Saturday morning for a talk with Lyman Hinchley ’bout figgerin’ out the insurance plan for Aunt Fanny Adams’s paintin’s. I got the figgers from Lyman and started on back from Cudbury—”
“What time did you leave Hinchley’s insurance office?”
“About two o’clock. The rain was just startin’ to come down. Got back home at twenty minutes of three. Parked my car — I remember I was madder’n hops at my Jimmy, he’d left his trike in the middle of my garage and I had to get out, it’s only a one-car garage, and got soakin’ wet—”
“Never mind that, Constable. It took you forty minutes, then, to drive from Cudbury to Shinn Corners, leaving Cudbury at about two o’clock. At two-thirteen, then, you were somewhere between Cudbury and this village?”
“Well, sure. I’d say... coverin’ twenty-eight miles in forty minutes, goin’ a bit over forty miles an hour all the way... I’d saw at two-thirteen I was ’bout nine miles out of Cudbury. Say nineteen miles from Shinn Corners.”
“That’s all.”
The next witness Adams called was Samuel Sheare.
The little pastor rose slowly from the last seat in the first row of jurors — Johnny, directly behind him, could see his bony shoulders contract and his skinny neck telescope into itself. He made his way to the Windsor chair, where Burney Hackett was waiting with the Bible. The touch of its limp cover seemed to reassure him. He took the oath in a clear voice.
At the trestle table old Andy Webster put his hand up to his eyes, as if to shut out the horrid spectacle of a juror preparing to testify in a murder case. Usher Peague was watching incredulously.
“Mr. Sheare,” said Adams, after the minister had given his name and occupation, “you were present in Fanny Adams’s house on the morning of July fourth — the day before the murder — and you had a conversation with her at that time?”
“Yes.”
“Will you please tell the jury what Aunt Fanny Adams said to you on that occasion, and what you said to her.”
