Harriman, the afternoon she showed up?” I asked, talking quietly so neither the spectators around us nor the doctor in the well in front of us could hear.
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I wasn’t home at the time. But there was no scene, no long argument, I can assure you. My father was perfectly normal when I returned home later that day.”
“Were you aware of the understanding between your father and the widow? Before the letter was read aloud yesterday, I mean.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. Something about the way she replied made me wonder, but the judge was back on his bench calling the proceedings to order.
“Your Honor,” Prickett announced, “the People call Dr. Weymouth Warren.” The doctor, one of Patterson’s principal rivals in town, walked stiffly to the stand. He was long-faced and dolorous, with a flowing gray beard. Like Patterson, he wore a surgical coat stained with the insignia of his profession.
The contrast with the prior witness could not have been greater. Where the blacksmith struggled for monosyllables, Warren expounded in paragraphs and sometimes chapters. Warren’s discussion of his background and experience in the medical arts extended at such great length that the judge was obliged to call for the luncheon recess in its midst.
A cynic might have wondered if Warren was more interested in recruiting patients from among the assembled multitudes than in providing his evidence. If this was indeed his goal, however, he had severely misjudged his audience, which looked on with increasing impatience as he expounded upon himself.
Midway through the afternoon session, Prickett had the sense—and the skill—to bring Warren to the nub of the matter. The rival doctor testified Dr. Patterson had often touted his self-brewed medicinal liquors as a reason his own medical practice flourished, while Warren’s did not enjoy the full success his superior learning should have produced. Patterson had boasted, Warren relayed to the jury, that the strongest of his liquors was so powerful a few drops would dissolve any bodily ailment, and a few more would be sufficient to produce almost instant slumber.
As the gallery whispered excitedly about this new evidence of guilt, Lincoln rose to his feet. “Will you admit Dr. Patterson here is known for his modern methods and learning?” he began.
Warren stared out mournfully. “He, himself, has often said as much, Mr. Lincoln,” he replied, his eyes blinking rapidly. “Indeed, there was a time he told me—”
“You’ve answered the question, Doctor,” Lincoln said with a raised hand. “Let’s see if we can’t keep matters moving apace.” Warren looked over at Prickett, but the prosecutor did not seem inclined to interfere with Lincoln’s attempt to control his witness.
“Patterson has sometimes undertaken treatments you were unfamiliar with or hesitant to try, for lack of a certain result?” put Lincoln.
“That’s true. He’s been reckless, in my judgment. For example, there was the time—”
“But oftentimes, his patients have lived,” continued Lincoln. “As a result of his innovative treatments, they’ve lived. Isn’t that the case?”
“For every one such, I’d wager there are three who’ve died sooner than they’ve needed to,” Warren returned. “For those three, if I had been privileged to be entrusted with their care, I suggest the results might have been conclusively different.”
“You have been all these years a competitor of Dr. Patterson?” Lincoln asked.
“A colleague, I’d like to think,” Warren returned, affecting an ill-fitting modesty. “There have been more than enough sick persons in the village—in the county, for that matter—to challenge all those of us with medical learning.”
“But none who’ve been more prominent, or successful, than Patterson—wouldn’t you agree?”
“Perhaps,” said Warren. He shifted in his chair.
“If a man falls sick in Springfield, he’s most likely to ask his wife to send for Patterson, isn’t that the case?”
“Not in the last few days, I wouldn’t think.” Warren could not prevent a smile from creeping onto his face.
“I meant prior to these events of course, Doctor,” Lincoln replied sharply.
“Perhaps.”
“And would you admit your practice would be enhanced if Dr. Patterson were—well, if he were no longer ministering to patients in Springfield?”
“You can hardly believe, Mr. Lincoln, such a prospect would influence my testimony today.”
“The jury shall be the judge of that,” Lincoln returned, and he sat.
“At least Mr. Lincoln tried to undermine that witness,” Jane whispered to me as Warren slowly made his way from the well of the courtroom.
Before I could respond, Prickett sprang to his feet and announced, “Your Honor, as the final witness of our case-in-chief, the People call Hiram Jenkins.” As it turned out, the