The Ballad of Frankie Silver - By Sharyn McCrumb Page 0,73
everybody know it, too? As if we’d feel sorry for her.”
“Was she a good mother?”
An impatient sigh. “She was tolerable.”
“And she was a faithful wife?”
A long pause. “I never heard different.”
Unlike Charlie.The unspoken words hung in the air, suggested only by a clever lawyer’s knowing smile. Nicholas Woodfin let the silence echo long enough to get inside everybody’s head, and then he dismissed the witness with a casual wave, indicating that he had no more use for her than Charlie ever did.
Had they been lovers? This dark, proud woman and the handsome, careless Silver boy? Perhaps, perhaps not. We would never know. Mr. Woodfin had no interest in letting us know. It was the seed of doubt he had meant to plant, and he was satisfied that he had done so to his client’s advantage. Still, I thought, the fact that Nancy Wilson had a metaphorical ax to grind did not mean that Frankie Silver had not used one in a more literal sense.
One of our own Morganton physicians, Dr. William Caldwell Tate, was the last witness before the recess. He is an affable young man, only just graduated from the South Carolina Medical College in Charleston, and back in Morganton to practice medicine alongside his older brother, Dr. Samuel Tate, who is not the Sam Tate that had served as foreman of the grand jury last week. The two Sam Tates are first cousins, and to the eternal vexation of future genealogists, no doubt, one Sam has married the sister of the other. (Anyone who can keep Morganton bloodlines straight can do square roots in his head.) Of young Dr. William Tate, suffice it to say: his mother was an Erwin.
In the cheerful, impersonal tone of all his kind (as if hedid not have a skull, or brains to leak out, or a life that would be all too brief), Tate commented on the injuries as they were reported to him by Constable Baker. The young doctor had been chosen to make that arduous two-day journey over the mountains to examine the corpse because the more established physicians could not have been spared from the care of their own patients in the vicinity of Morganton. “We cannot neglect the living in order to see to the dead,” his brother had once remarked in another court case.
After establishing Dr. William Tate’s identity and medical qualifications, Mr. Alexander said, “Constable Baker described the nature of the injuries sustained by the victim, did he not?”
“He did, sir. I was able to examine the remains for myself, and my opinion tallied with that of the constable.”
“How were the remains found?”
“Some, of course, were burnt, and of those I was able to examine only fragments, but the others had been buried in the snow or concealed about logs in that frozen wilderness, and those parts were tolerably well preserved. The skin had been blanched and shriveled from the cold, but there was no decay or invasion by insects.”
I looked at once at my sister-in-law Miss Mary, hoping to see her swooning in the arms of her cousin, but she was as alert and attentive as if a quadrille were being performed. I put it down to a want of imagination on her part, for I felt that the room had suddenly become unseasonably warm.
The doctor continued, “I have taken the liberty of producing a sketch of the placement of various wounds.” He drew a sheet of paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to the attorney, who examined it and passed it on to the judge, to Mr. Woodfin, to the jury, and lastly to myself. Dr. Tate had sketched the head and limbs unconnected to a torso, and he had labeled each part with the size and nature of the wound. Many of his notations read: Sawing marks, made post-mortem.It was not those wounds that concerned us.
“Were you able to determine the cause of death, Doctor?”
“Any of a number of strong blows with an ax would have served to dispatch the victim, but the one I judge most likely to have done so was a head wound—a gash of several inches’ width along the right side of the skull. That blow would have so incapacitated a man that he would be unable to defend himself.”
William Alexander considered the matter. “One quick blow to the head—probably delivered without warning—and poor Charles Silver is helpless before his murderer. Would it require great strength to strike a man thus with an ax?”