A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

“Yes.”

“And knowing or believing that he had come to your house to kill your husband, you sat downstairs with him on a settee and you talked?”

“Yes.”

She claimed she left Gray, with her husband’s handgun on the piano, when she went upstairs to the bathroom. And even at the far end of the hallway, with the bathroom door closed, she heard “a terrific thud” as Judd hit, but did not fracture, Albert’s skull. She herself did not strike her husband with the sash weight or pour chloroform on his pillow or strangle him with picture wire that she tightened with Judd’s mechanical pencil. When she revived fr

om her faint and saw what had happened, “I was too frightened to cry out.”

“Did you administer any aid to your husband?”

“No.”

“You did not know from any examination of your husband whether or not he was then dead or alive?”

She sizzled with contempt for the prosecutor but coolly answered, “No, I did not.”

“And you remained with Gray in the adjoining room for how long?”

“For a couple of hours.”

“And you gave him your nightgown and robe to burn?”

“Yes.”

“You took your nightgown off in his presence?”

“Yes.”

“You got some other clothing, did you?”

“Yes.”

“You went into the room where your husband lay dying or dead to get that other clothing?”

“Yes.”

“And still you did not look at him?”

“No.”

“You did not touch him?”

“No.”

“But you could have?”

“Yes.”

She felt she was no longer playing or impersonating; she just was. Looking past the lawyers and jury to that huge crowd of excited strangers, she felt like a grande dame of theater bestowing a few hours of her celebrity on a grateful audience. There was petulance in her voice at times, she often glared, and she was forced to admit that she’d lied to whomever she spoke to on Sunday, March 20th. But Ruth guessed rightly that the examiners sought to stir up some vestiges of the fury and ferocity she’d used against Albert, so in the main she countered their attacks with stateliness and restraint. She recognized that she was telling of a night as it ought to have been, not as it was, but for Lorraine’s sake she was clinging to that tenet of justice called “beyond a reasonable doubt.” She was therefore as careless in her testimony as she was also honest and shameless, flaunting her disregard for her husband, serenely contradicting herself or insisting falsehoods were true, seldom reversing a statement when she was caught in a lie, letting inconsistencies grow wings and fly. She innocently communicated an outrageous version of events as though a jury of men would have to believe her. It seemed to outsiders that she did not recognize the jeopardy she was in.

But her attorneys did, so they called pretty, nine-year-old Lorraine Snyder to the witness stand, a girl without a father and, should the jury so choose, with a mother soon to die. Because of the jail’s rules, Ruth hadn’t seen her daughter since March 21st when she was arrested, and it was now May 3rd. She gasped with surprise when Lorraine’s name was called and she was so pleased to watch her filing into the courtroom behind the bailiff that Ruth couldn’t help smiling even as she wept. Ruth leaned toward Dana Wallace to say how pretty Lorraine looked in that wide-brimmed black hat and a just-bought black middy dress. And Ruth swiftly wiped her blurring tears away so she wouldn’t miss a second of the child’s testimony as Lorraine solemnly listened to Justice Scudder’s instructions.

The court ruled that the girl would not be sworn, then requested she give her name and address. She avoided the faces of Ruth and Judd as she did so. Justice Scudder then said, “Just lean back in your chair and be comfortable and look at that gentleman at the other end of the table”—indicating Hazelton—“and do not look at anybody else. Just look right at him.”

Hazelton strode away from Lorraine’s mother as he asked, “Lorraine, do you remember the morning your mother called you?”

“Yes, sir.”