The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“I didn’t want my family or anyone else to know about my visits to Miss Grey.” The courtroom rustled. “In this,” added the elder McKell bitterly, “I seem to have failed with a bang.”

It was an unfortunate metaphor. Someone in the courtroom tittered, and at least one newspaper reporter dodged out to phone his paper the “expert psychiatric opinion” that the lapsus linguae might well have been a Freudian slip by which the accused confessed his guilt. As for O’Brien, he frowned ever so slightly; he did not care for witnesses who volunteered information on the stand, especially defendants. He was taken off the hook by the district attorney, who had not caught the inference and was fretting about the accused’s sitting around the courtroom like an actor at a dress rehearsal. He said so, emphatically.

“The defendant will remain in make-up only a little while longer, Your Honor,” O’Brien said, “and only for the purpose of having one other witness corroborate his identity.”

Judge Suarez waved, and O’Brien went on: “I will ask you to tell us once again, Mr. McKell, of your arrival at Miss Grey’s apartment on the night of September 14th, and of what happened subsequently.” He led Ashton through his story. “Then you don’t remember the name of the bar? Or where it was located?”

“I do not.”

“Your witness.”

De Angelus’s cross-examination was long, detailed, theatrical, and futile. He could not shake the defendant’s story, although he spattered it liberally with the mud of doubt. In the end McKell sat labeled adulterer, home-wrecker, betrayer of trust in high places, perverted aristocrat, corrupt citizen of the democracy, and above all murderer. It was an artistic job, and it made Dane and Judy writhe; but no flicker of anger or resentment — or shame — touched the elder McKell’s stone-hard face; and Robert O’Brien simply listened with his big head cocked, boyishly attentive, even — one would have thought — a little pleased.

When the district attorney sat down, sated, O’Brien idly said, “Call Matthew Thomas Cleary to the stand.”

A thick-set man with curly gray hair was sworn. He had a squashed nose and round blue eyes that seemed to say: We have seen everything, and nothing matters. His brogue was refreshing, delivered in a hoarse voice.

He was Matthew Thomas Cleary, part owner and sometime bartender of the Kerry Dancers Bar and Grill on 59th Street off First Avenue. He had never been in trouble with the law, saints be praised.

“Now, Mr. Cleary,” O’Brien said easily, walking over to “Dr. Stone” and touching his shoulder, “have you ever seen this man before?”

“Yes, sor. In me bar one night.”

O’Brien strolled back to the witness stand. “You’re sure, Mr. Cleary? You couldn’t be mistaken?”

“That I could not.”

A police officer escorted a woman to a seat at the rear of the courtroom, unnoticed. Her face under the half-veil was chalky. It was Lutetia McKell, sucked out of her shell at last.

“Mr. Cleary, you must see hundreds of faces across your bar. What makes you remember this man’s face?”

“’Twas this way, sor. He was wearing this beard. That was in the first place. The Kerry Dancers bar don’t get one customer in a thousand wears a beard. So that makes him stick in me mind. Second place, on the shelf behind the bar I got me a big jar with a sign on it, ‘The Children of Loretto,’ that’s this orphanage out on Staten Island. I put the small change into it that people leave on the bar. This fellow with the beard, his first drink he gives me a twenty, I give him change, and he shoves over a five-dollar bill. ‘Put it in the jar,’ he says, ‘for the orphan children.’ And I did, and I thanked him. That makes me remember him. Nobody else ever give me a five-dollar bill for the jar.”

“What night was this, Mr. Cleary?” O’Brien asked suddenly.

“September 14th, sor.”

“You mean to say, Mr. Cleary, you can remember the exact night two months ago that this man had a drink at your bar and gave you a five-dollar bill for The Children of Loretto?”

“Yes, sor. On account of that was the night of the championship fight. I’d drew a ring around the date on me bar calendar so I wouldn’t forget, I mean so I’d remember not to turn on a movie or a speech or something on the bar TV instead of the fights. And this man come in, like I say—”

District Attorney De Angelus was sitting on the edge of the chair at his table, elbows planted securely, listening with both cocked ears in a kind of philosophic panic.

“Let’s not go too fast, Mr. Cleary. All right, it was the night of the championship prize fight, September 14th, and that made you remember the date. But how can you be so sure this man with the beard came in on that night? Couldn’t it have been on some other night?”