The minister was poorly today. His movements were slow and his bloodshot eyes suggested that there had been little rest for the spirit. He took his seat with the stiffness of a man who has been too long on his knees.
Adams came to the point at once: “Mr. Sheare, where exactly were you at two-thirteen Saturday afternoon?”
“I was in the parsonage.”
“Alone?”
“Mrs. Sheare was with me.”
“In the same room, Mr. Sheare?”
“Yes. I was workin’ on my sermon for Sunday. I began directly after lunch, which was at noon, and I was still hard at it when the fire siren went off. Mrs. Sheare and I were never out of sight of each other.”
Adams was embarrassed. “Of course, Mr. Sheare. Er... you didn’t happen to see anyone pass the north corner — let’s say from a window of the parsonage overlooking Shinn Road — between a quarter to two and a quarter after?”
“We were in my study, Mr. Adams. My study is at the opposite side of the parsonage, facin’ the cemetery.”
“Judge Webster?”
“No questions.”
“You may stand down, Mr. Sheare,” said Judge Shinn.
But Mr. Sheare sat there. He was looking at Josef Kowalczyk, and Josef Kowalczyk was looking back at him with the unclouded trust of a mortally injured dog.
“Mr. Sheare?” said the Judge again.
The minister started. “Pa’don. I know this is probably out of order, Judge Shinn, but may I take this opportunity to make a request of the court?”
“Yes?”
“When I took Josef the lunch tray my wife prepared for him today, he asked me to do somethin’ for him. I should very much like to do it. But I realize that under the circumstances it’s necessary to get permission.”
Andrew Webster shot a glance at the prisoner. But the man had eyes only for Samuel Sheare.
“What is it the defendant wants, Mr. Sheare?”
“His faith forbids him to accept spiritual consolation from a clergyman not of his church. He would like to see a priest. I ask permission to call Father Girard of the Church of the Holy Ascension in Cudbury.”
Judge Shinn was silent.
“He’s very much in need, Judge,” said Mr. Sheare urgently. “We must realize that he’s goin’ through tremendous anxiety not only because of his predicament but also ’cause he’s bein’ held in a Protestant church. Surely—”
“Mr. Sheare.” The Judge leaned forward in a sort of colic. “This is a request which shouldn’t even have to be made. But you know the peculiar... restrictions of our circumstances here. To bring in an outsider now, even a man of the cloth, might give rise to complications we simply couldn’t cope with. I’m dreadfully sorry. In a few days, yes. But not now, Mr. Sheare. Do you think you can make the defendant understand?”
“I doubt it.”
Samuel Sheare gathered himself and went back to his chair, where he folded his hands and closed his eyes.
“Elizabeth Sheare,” said Ferriss Adams.
Then followed the spectacle of the court stenographer exchanging her notebook for the witness chair, and the ancient defense attorney, who claimed to have perfected a shorthand system of his own almost two generations before, temporarily taking over her duties.
Her tenure was short. The stout wife of the pastor testified in a soft and troubled voice, seeking the eyes of her husband frequently — they opened as soon as she took the stand — and answering without hesitation.
Yes, she had joined her husband in his study immediately after doing the lunch dishes Saturday. No, she had not helped him with his sermon; Mr. Sheare always prepared his sermons unaided. She had planned to go to Cudbury with Emily Berry and the Berry children to do some shopping—
“Oh, you don’t have a car, Mrs. Sheare?”
She flushed. “Well, we don’t really need one, Mr. Adams. This is a very small parish, and when Mr. Sheare goes parish-calling he walks...”
But she had changed her mind about going to Cudbury; Johnny gathered that some stern Congregational discipline had had to be exercised. The school year had ended on Friday, June the twenty-seventh, and in the week before Independence Day she had been busy cleaning up the schoolroom, taking inventory of school property, putting textbooks and supplies away, filing students’ records, and the like; on Thursday, the day before the holiday, she had finished and locked the school for the summer. But she had one further duty to perform, and it was this that had dissuaded her from going into Cudbury with Emily Berry on Saturday. She spent the afternoon at work beside her husband preparing her annual report to the school board, summarizing the year just ended, attendance records, a financial statement, the probable enrollment for the fall term, and so on. Yes, they had worked steadily without leaving the house until the alarm sent them rushing outdoors to learn of Aunt Fanny Adams’s shocking death.
Andrew Webster had only one question: “Mrs. Sheare, when you got home Friday from Mrs. Adams’s get-together, or perhaps after the Fourth of July exercises on the green, did your husband give you any money?”
