Carolina I folded the letter and put it back among the other letters that had come for me that day. There’s an end to it, I thought, but I could not help feeling saddened at this turn of events.
David Newland, the owner of the stagecoach line, stood nearby, watching me. Since he brings most of the news to Morganton, it is not unnatural that he should take an interest in it. “Bad tidings, Mr. Gaither?” he said, ambling over to join me.
“It is very bad indeed for Mrs. Silver,” I said. “Her appeal has been denied.”
He frowned. “So Mr. Woodfin was not able to persuade the justices to show her mercy?”
I hesitated, but I could see no way to evade the question, and I told myself that it was no business of mine anyhow. “According to the letter, Mr. Woodfin was not there.”
“But who presented her case to the justices, then? Mr. Wilson has not left town these past weeks.”
I could not meet his gaze, for I knew that I would see the outrage I myself felt mirrored in his eyes. “No one appeared on her behalf before the Supreme Court. The case was judged only on the merits of the written appeal.” A document of some three and a half hundred words, cribbed together by me in weariness and haste on the night following the trial. Her life had depended on this brief and colorless cluster of words, and it had failed her.
David Newland’s eyes widened. “She had no lawyer to plead her case in Raleigh? No one?”
I studied the wagon tracks in the red dust at my feet. “It’s a long way to Raleigh,” I murmured.
“Don’t I own the stagecoach, by God? I know how far it is, Mr. Gaither. I know exactly. And if I had been hired by that poor girl’s family to see her through her troubles, I would have kept my word, so help
me I would, even if Raleigh was halfway to hell and stank of brimstone.”
I could think of nothing to say that would not cast aspersions on my fellow attorneys, so I merely patted him on the arm and tried to summon a smile.
“Well, what must be done now?” asked Newland.
“Done?” I stared at him. “There is nothing to be done. The jury ruled, and the State Supreme Court has upheld their decision. It is all over now, except for the sentencing, which will come in the fall term of court, and then the execution that must follow.”
“We’ll see about that,” Newland said.
“I beg your pardon?”
He sighed. “You know, Mr. Gaither, when we had that trial back in March, tempers were high around here, and I don’t mind telling you that I was as eager as the rest to see that young woman hanged for her crime, but there has been talk around town lately. People are saying that Charlie Silver didn’t amount to much, and maybe he got what was coming to him. They’ve been mulling this case over, and now I hear folks saying that a decent woman doesn’t turn to violence but for one reason: to defend herself, or more likely her child. They had a little baby girl, as I recall.”
“A daughter,” I murmured. “Just over a year old when the murder took place.”
Newland nodded triumphantly. “There you are. That set me to thinking, all right. Why didn’t her lawyers admit she killed Charlie Silvers and then explain why?”
I sighed. It is difficult to explain the law to laymen. They seem to think that justice has to do with right and wrong, with absolutes. Perhaps when we stand before our Maker on Judgment Day, His court will be a just one, but those trials held on earth are not about what happened, but about what can be proven to have happened, or what twelve citizens can be persuaded to believe happened. Sometimes I think that the patron saint of lawyers ought to be Pontius Pilate, for surely he said it best: What is truth?
David Newland tugged at my sleeve. “You’re a lawyer, Mr. Gaither. Why didn’t they just tell us what happened instead of stonewalling with a plea of not guilty?”
I sighed. “It would have been a great gamble to have admitted her guilt in open court. There was no proof of self-defense, for there is only Mrs. Silver’s word for it, and she was not at liberty to testify. Her attorneys must have felt it was safer to make the state prove her guilt on the circumstantial