A Case for Appeal

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Beautiful Nell Varney was a newcomer to Contera - and to murder. Suddenly she found herself in a strange courtroom faced with seven pairs of hate-ridden, accusing eyes. Seven witnesses had identified her as the murderer who had caused the death of two women by performing illegal abortions. Why would anyone in this strange town believe Nell was innocent? Could anyone help her? One man, a dedicated lawyer named Jesse Falkenstein, was determined to try . . . 'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Release date: October 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Jesse Falkenstein came out of the smallish old building; the late-afternoon sun hit him like a physical blow there on the top step. This was September, and this was the great
inland valley of California; at noon today the thermometer had registered one hundred and nineteen, and it hadn’t dropped five degrees since.

L.A. and environs were bad enough; he wondered why anybody lived up here. Of choice.

He came down to the sidewalk and started up toward where his car was parked. Not much of anybody around now; the reporters had all gone, and the courtroom crowd dispersed.

Sure, he thought. Whole thing over as far as they were concerned. No use feeling bitter about that: natural; what else?

He ambled down the street, hands in pockets, suit jacket over one arm, hat shoved back, a tall, dark, lanky fellow, wearing his usual amiable, noncommittal expression. His own mother had never
claimed he was good looking, what with his big, jutting, high-bridged nose, gauntly hollow cheeks, a jaw too long and a mouth too wide; what she had always said was handsome-is-as-handsome-does and
Jesse was a smart boy, he’d go far. And he sometimes wondered if that had been just mother love.

There was someone waiting for him, leaning on the fender of his old gray Ford. Another tall man, another man in the early thirties, but much better looking than Jesse: mobile, clean-shaven
features, a strong, straight nose, a long upper lip, square, strong jaw, square, high forehead under a shock of tawny-gold hair. He’d taken off jacket and tie, leaned there smoking, staring
remotely across the sidewalk at the store fronts with their sale announcements screaming soundlessly.

“You might,” said Jesse, “have made it January. I mean, adding insult to injury—another lost case on my record, and risking heat stroke besides.”

The blond man’s long upper lip twitched once. “Well, you can go home now. I’ll buy you a consolation drink.”

“That’s a deal.”

They left their jackets in the car and walked on half a block to the nearest bar. There were a few booths against the wall; in mutual consent they sat in one of those. The waiter who came over
was fat and mustached. “Ciao, Captain Varallo—come va?”

“Non c’e male,” said Varallo absently. “Brandy.”

“Bourbon, straight,” said Jesse. He looked at Varallo across the little table. Always struck you a little funny, remember he was Italian: big blond fellow: preconceived
ideas—like, God knew, the preconceived ideas anybody named Falkenstein was always running into. Lodovico Varallo sounded like a fellow who ought to look like that waiter. North Italian, a lot
of them blond . . . Hard to figure Varallo other ways. Smart boy, a good man all ways. So what the hell was he doing up here still stagnating? Different thing up to a couple of years ago or
thereabouts, when he’d had the family on his neck. Which was the reason he’d had to leave the university twelve years back: father dead and a pack of younger kids still to be supported
by somebody . . . Varallo had walked out of the Church a long time back, but he wasn’t a man to walk out of responsibility. And it probably hadn’t been so easy for him another way too,
Jesse reflected: because the rest of the family had, of course, bitterly disapproved Varallo’s leaving the Church and without much doubt had never ceased to work on him about it.

He and Varallo had kept up, as the saying went, the desultory way men do: a letter now and then, and a couple of times Varallo got down to the big town. Never said much about himself, Varallo;
but it was possible to guess at this and that—since he’d apparently stayed at home only until a couple of the older kids were capable of managing alone. Domestically, not financially.
Varallo’s address for some time now had been the Contera Hotel. And possible to wonder, too, about a family who’d feel that way and still take his money. Well, necessity. And probably
quite a lot of his money; Jesse remembered vaguely that there’d been five or six kids. But he remembered also that Vic had said something, a couple of years ago, about all the kids being on
their own now. So what was he doing still here? He had a job he’d worked up in, sure, but it couldn’t pay much and he’d never meant—so he used to say—to stay in
Contera all his life. Do better down in the big city. Well, none of Jesse Falkenstein’s business, of course.

“Capitano—Signor!” With a flourish the drinks set before them.

Varallo picked up his brandy and looked at it. “How’d she take it?”

Jesse shrugged. “How’d you think? She’s got what it takes—she didn’t go into hysterics, if that’s what you mean. I’ll appeal the verdict, of
course.”

“Think that’s any good?”

Jesse swallowed half the bourbon and said, “Why, no, Vic, I don’t. The judge knew his business, far as I could see. No little legal loopholes to make it a mistrial. Of course,
I’m not one of those smart boys who’ve got all that business memorized—court steno sneezes during testimony, so one word left out, so hey-presto, it’s a mistrial. I’ll
look. But on the face of it, there’s no grounds there. Might do something on prejudiced witnesses. On that negative decision we got asking a change of venue. I don’t know. But I
don’t think we’ll get a new trial, or anything like that. Which I didn’t say to her.”

“Naturally. So what?”

“Else? Why, I can claim she wasn’t fit to plead. Sanity. Obviously. You’re going to say it’s a democratic country, everybody treated alike?—”

“I wasn’t, no.”

“—If there was money to hire a couple of psychiatrists, I could put up a fight on that. Have ’em swearing she’s got amnesia or something—double talk. She says
no.”

“I can’t say I blame her.”

Jesse finished the bourbon. “Life is life, even stashed away in Camarillo for a while.”

“For how long a while? Five years, ten? And another hearing to establish sanity? Could she pass that one then?”

“And there’s that,” agreed Jesse. “Any case, she says no. She says she’d rather have it quick than slow, if it’s coming and she knows it’s
coming.”

They sat in silence for a while, until Varallo beckoned the waiter again. Over a refill he said, “There was that fellow Oscar Slater—back in the eighties, wasn’t it?—he
got off in the end.”

“Sure. I’ve been doing a certain amount of thinking about Mr. Slater too. Lot of time and work and money involved, fighting a thing like that.”

Varallo looked at him. “Yes, money’s important—I suppose—”

“Well, not so important as all that,” said Jesse. “Sure, I’m going to fight it. What else did you think? Right now we’ve got about six weeks. The appellate court
won’t be sitting in Fresno until then. That’s where and when it’ll come up. The judge knows I’m going to appeal. She’ll stay here until we get that decision. So I
thought I’d use that six weeks to go on a little private hunting trip for the other one.”

Varallo laughed. “Just like that! Planning any more miracles for later on? And where do you think you’ll pick up the trail? You looked, I looked—”

“So we did. Look some more, that’s all.”

“Diavolo!” said Varallo. “It was the Inver one built it up— Teresa Zacchio, who the hell cared? And second degree, not first. They’d never have got the
death sentence if it hadn’t been for Inver. Two of them.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“And what the hell could I do? Seven witnesses swearing to her—”

“Well, you did what you could,” said Jesse. “You sent for me. . . . Seven. Four second-class ones, three first-class—”

“How right you are!” said Varallo sardonically. “Four dirty stupid Catholics with foreign names, and—”

“Now let’s just leave the generalizations out,” said Jesse. “By that I meant credibility and degree of certainty. Not an awful lot to choose, of course. Not very good
light, any of the times and places. I said I’d been thinking about Mr. Slater too. One of the things I thought about was the witnesses there. In that case all but one of them was honestly
mistaken and confused. You pay your money and take your choice about the last one—one of those pigheaded females who wouldn’t admit she was wrong if she’d said it rained
ink—but there’s some hint she identified the wrong man deliberately, that she knew the real killer.”

“That’s not a new idea to me. I worked a little on it. Which one do you think might be doing that here?”

“Couldn’t say. Haven’t been able to get near enough, except in court. Prosecution witnesses. Now it’s a little different. I’m going to work on them, and I may want
some help.”

“Anything I can do.”

Jesse moved his glass around on the wet table. “Like to see your notes on their first interrogations, kick this around a little in private with you.”

“Sure. You staying here?”

“Think I’ll come back to your little one-horse burg with you, if there’s anywhere to stay.”

“We’ll find a place.”

“O.K., let’s get going.” They split the check and started back to their cars. Jesse looked over at the county courthouse as he switched on the ignition. The jail was behind,
facing another street; he wouldn’t see her face at any of those windows; but he looked, and sighed. He pulled the Ford out into the street and caught up behind Varallo’s dusty black
Chevy at the next corner.

He hadn’t wanted the case to start with, had taken it on as a pure favor to Varallo. Not that Vic had given him details in that telegram: just said, in effect, come and take this case.
He’d landed in this Godforsaken wide place in the road to face about the least desirable setup for an only moderately successful and affluent lawyer. A client with no money behind her; a case
almost impossible to answer, on first glance, because there was so little to get hold of; and no time to do much delving, the calendar date fixed so soon.

And Vic Varallo, the senior police officer who’d seen her charged and arrested, said to him, “She’s not guilty, and you’ve got to prove it. I can’t, I’ve
tried.”

If he’d had any sense he’d have turned right around and gone home. Let her find some other fall guy to dream up some feeble defense to satisfy the letter of the law, for the two
hundred and seventy bucks in her savings account.

Two hundred and sixty-four. They let prisoners draw on a little personal deposit for what they called sundries. He’d paid for the cigarettes he brought her himself, and those damned-fool
crystal mints she liked. “You’ll ruin your teeth,” he’d said, and she laughed and said she never had anything wrong with her teeth, not a single cavity, and what did it
matter now anyway? Takes a long time for teeth to get cavities, doesn’t it, she said. Maybe it won’t matter by then. Will it, Jesse?

And that was the first time he’d got her to call him anything but Mr. Falkenstein.

Well, any lawyer worth the ink on his diploma could always think of something to say. But whether it meant anything or not—

And Clarence Darrow himself might have found it just a little bit awkward to have seven live witnesses swearing in court that yes, sir, as God’s my judge, that’s the woman I saw.

Witnesses. Giacomo Tasso, salesman. Alice and John Price, housewife and merchant. Christine Inver, housewife. (These legal definitions!) Maria Zacchio, spinster. Francisco Zacchio, laborer.
Antonia Cambiare, housewife.

Which lying, which mistaken? Any lying at all?

She looked at him, that first time, and she said simply, “I’m not a very religious person, Mr. Falkenstein, so maybe it wouldn’t mean very much for me to say, I swear to God.
And anyway, it’d be an easy thing to say, wouldn’t it? When you come down to it, it’s just my word against theirs. But I hope you’ll believe me, though it’s a lot to
ask—against seven people—it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it.”

And he believed her. No hard and fast rules about it. A lot of people hadn’t. Most people.

Because, after all, seven witnesses—whatever there was to be said for and against them as individuals, seven—

“Mrs. Inver, you’ve told us that you had no knowledge of your daughter’s pregnancy. That there was nothing, no hint, no suspicion in your
mind—”

“That is true.” Cold eyes hiding pain under their lids, unemotional voice. “The whole thing was a—terrible shock to me.”

“I’m sure we all understand that. You first learned of this condition, perhaps I should say this former condition, when Dr. Burnett informed you after examining your daughter on the
evening of March ninth last.”

“Yes.”

“So that approximately an hour before, on that evening, when, as we have heard, your daughter Carol arrived—or was brought—home by this strange woman, you had no idea what was
wrong with her. You—”

“We have been over this.” Taut voice. “I—she told me she was spending the weekend with friends—at a mountain resort. . . . Yes, three days. Nearly four, that is, it
was the Friday morning when she—left. . . . Yes, her own car. . . . And Monday evening when she—came home . . . I was coming down the stairs—facing the front door, when it opened
and—Carol—came in, or that is, I mean, she was—obviously ill, this woman helping her—holding her arm. . . . I believe the woman saw me but I couldn’t be sure. She
just—let go of Carol’s arm and turned and went out—shut the door. . . . I don’t know. I couldn’t guess how long. Perhaps five seconds.”

“Five seconds that you had this woman in view? But she was not facing you all that time, Mrs. Inver? She was helping your daughter in, supporting her—turned away from you, perhaps
her head bent a little, as she—?”

“I—really couldn’t—it was a short time, of course, but—”

“Yes. But the woman was not facing you for that entire estimated time of five seconds?”

“I—no.”

“She came through the door slightly behind your daughter, and—”

“She pushed her, really—simply shoved her inside. Carol—stumbled on the rug, she—”

“Yes. And then this woman, whether or not she saw you there, dropped your daughter’s arm, turned, and went out. Mrs. Inver, will you think back carefully—it’s a long
while ago, I know, and these little details are easily forgotten—and of course you were naturally a great deal more concerned for your daughter—but will you try to remember, did this
woman actually cross the threshold at all? Did she come into the light at all?”

“I—think so. Yes—J-just into the entrance hall.”

Entrance hall of the big Inver house on Sunset Drive. Place where money lived, you saw from a glance at the outside: sprawling Mediterranean-style cream stucco, manicured lawn, curving drive
under Chinese elms.

“Yes. Now about the conditions of light, Mrs. Inver. It was dark outside; I believe you’ve told us that it was around nine o’clock. There is a ceiling fixture—an electric
fixture—in this entrance hall. Will you describe it, please.”

“It’s—just a ceiling fixture. It’s a large bowl-shaped—gray metal—with bulbs in the—the hollow, if you see what I—”

“Bulbs. How many?”

Hesitation. She didn’t do her own housework, of course: how would she know? “I believe two. Lying crosswise. I’m not sure, so I won’t answer that definitely.”
Honest woman.

Little flurry in the courtroom behind: female voice: “Excuse me, Your Honor, if I can interrupt—just to sort of have it definite-like—it is two, Mrs. Inver. Two
hundred-watt bulbs.”

Rap for order. And that wasn’t in the testimony record, of course, but now everybody knew, including the jury. “Mrs. Inver, do you know the height of the ceiling in this entrance
hall?”

“I b-believe it’s ten feet, higher than— We wanted—well, that doesn’t matter. I think ten feet. . . . I don’t know, I suppose the fixture’s, oh, perhaps
twenty-four inches long—less. . . . Yes, the bowl part faces upward, of course. . . . There was enough light, if that’s what—”

“Now, Mrs. Inver, you say you had this—er—fairly good look at the woman. How was she dressed?”

“I don’t know, something dark—a long coat, something like that—I don’t remember exactly. . . . No, I don’t remember whether she wore a hat or scarf. You know
how you look first at a person’s face. I didn’t—”

“But we have agreed that you had the opportunity for only a very brief glimpse of her face. You say you had a sufficiently clear view of this woman’s features so that
later—much later—one hundred and forty-nine days later, Mrs. Inver, on the fifth of August—you were able to identify her with complete certainty?”

Hesitation. “Yes.”

And God damn Vic Varallo for so carefully making it an honest confrontation. Not just bringing the two of them together, was this the woman you saw that night, but noncommittal: parade
of a dozen women, all the similar ones he could collect in this Godforsaken little one-horse town. Pick out the one who might be. So, skip over that: don’t remind the jury.

“Upon what did you identify her, Mrs. Inver? . . . Her face, yes, but let’s be a little more specific. The color of her hair?”

“Well, I—wouldn’t say, it’s just dark brown hair, nothing—unusual—”

“Not the color of her eyes; you had obviously never been close enough, observed so carefully—”

“I don’t know. No. Just as a whole, that’s all. Her figure—” a bit doubtful, there—“thin, oh, straight—the way she moved. Just as a
whole.”

“Just as a whole—at a glance, a five-second or not quite five-second glance, all that time ago. I see. You had this sufficiently clear look at the woman then to remember her features
one hundred and forty-nine days later. And yet, Mrs. Inver, if the prosecuting attorney is correct in the charge he is arguing here, in this interval of time you had seen this woman again,
repeatedly. And had not so identified her. Can you explain this to us?”

“I don’t know Miss Varney. I don’t remember ever seeing her—until Captain Varallo—”

“Mrs. Inver!” (Implication in the tone, really.) “The official census of Contera is slightly over nineteen hundred persons. Miss Varney has lived there for over two
years, and for all that time she held a position which brought her more or less before the public. Are you telling this court that you are sure you had never laid eyes on Miss Varney
before you were asked if she resembled this strange woman?”

“I certainly don’t remember it if I had.”

“If you had. Yes, the mind plays us some odd tricks, we all know that—we look at things sometimes without realizing we’re seeing them—but the mind registers it, of
course. I believe you do bank at the Contera branch of the Merchants’ National Bank? Yes. You have occasion to go to the bank perhaps once a week? . . . Well, once in two weeks? . . . Yes.
You’re familiar with the building, then, and I think we can take it for granted that the ladies and gentlemen of the jury are too. It isn’t a very big building, is it, Mrs. Inver? You
agree that there is just one large main office, with counters along two sides?—I can introduce competent testimony to this effect, but it will save time if you agree—that this main
public office of the bank is just forty-four feet square.”

“Yes. Very well.”

“And on nearly every occasion when you entered this not-very-big place, Miss Varney was somewhere behind one of those counters, in her capacity as general clerk. You never noticed
Miss Varney, just casually? . . . I suggest to you, Mrs. Inver, that on the night of March ninth, when this strange woman brought your daughter home to die of postabortion infection, you did not
obtain as close a view of her features or person as you claim to have done—that at some later time you did see Miss Varney in the bank, very casually, as one does notice things and
people without thinking very much about them—and that when you were confronted with Miss Varney and asked if she resembled this woman, you identified her as that woman
because she looked familiar to you from the times you had seen her in the bank. That a perfectly natural confusion led you to connect her. . .