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By Root 3772 0

atop a table; beside them lay the kidnap note, held in place by a bottle of ink. In the center of the table were white sheets of paper fastened together by a metal clasp; it was his signed confession. And there was Mr. Dalton, white-faced, white-haired; and beside him was Mrs. Dalton, still and straight, her face, as always, tilted trustingly upward, to one side. Then he saw the trunk into which he had stuffed Mary’s body, the trunk which he had lugged down the stairs and had carried to the station. And, yes, there was the blackened hatchet blade and a tiny round piece of metal. Bigger felt a tap on his shoulder and looked round; Max was smiling at him.

“Take it easy, Bigger. You won’t have to say anything here. It won’t be long.”

The man at the front table rapped again.

“Is there a member of the deceased’s family here, one who can give us the family history?”

A murmur swept the room. A woman rose hurriedly and went to the blind Mrs. Dalton, caught hold of her arm, led her forward to a seat to the extreme right of the man at the table, facing the six men in the rows of chairs. That must be Mrs. Patterson, Bigger thought, remembering the woman Peggy had mentioned as Mrs. Dalton’s maid.

“Will you please raise your right hand?”

Mrs. Dalton’s frail, waxen hand went up timidly. The man asked Mrs. Dalton if the testimony she was about to give was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God, and Mrs. Dalton answered,

“Yes, sir; I do.”

Bigger sat stolidly, trying not to let the crowd detect any fear in him. His nerves were painfully taut as he hung onto the old woman’s words. Under the man’s questioning, Mrs. Dalton said that her age was fifty-three, that she lived at 4605 Drexel Boulevard, that she was a retired school teacher, that she was the mother of Mary Dalton and the wife of Henry Dalton. When the man began asking questions relating to Mary, the crowd leaned forward in their seats. Mrs. Dalton said that Mary was twenty-three years of age, single; that she carried about thirty thousand dollars’ worth of insurance, that she owned real estate amounting to approximately a quarter of a million dollars, and that she was active right up to the date of her death. Mrs. Dalton’s voice came tense and faint and Bigger wondered how much more of this he could stand. Would it not have been much better to have stood up in the full glare of those roving knives of light and let them shoot him down? He could have cheated them out of this show, this hunt, this eager sport.

“Mrs. Dalton,” the man said, “I’m the Deputy Coroner and it is with considerable anxiety that I ask you these questions. But it is necessary for me to trouble you in order to establish the identity of the deceased….”

“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Dalton whispered.

Carefully, the coroner lifted from the table at his side a tiny piece of blackened metal; he turned, fronted Mrs. Dalton, then paused. The room was so quiet that Bigger could hear the coroner’s footsteps on the wooden floor as he walked to Mrs. Dalton’s chair. Tenderly, he caught her hand in his and said,

“I’m placing in your hand a metal object which the police retrieved from the ashes of the furnace in the basement of your home. Mrs. Dalton, I want you to feel this metal carefully and tell me if you remember ever having felt it before.”

Bigger wanted to turn his eyes away, but he could not. He watched Mrs. Dalton’s face; he saw the hand tremble that held the blackened bit of metal. Bigger jerked his head round. A woman began to sob without restraint. A wave of murmurs rose through the room. The coroner took a quick step back to the table and rapped sharply with his knuckles. The room was instantly quiet, save for the sobbing woman. Bigger looked back to Mrs. Dalton. Both of her hands were now fumbling nervously with the piece of metal; then her shoulders shook. She was crying.

“Do you recognize it?”

“Y-y-yes….”

“What is it?”

“A-a-an earring….”

“When did you first come in contact with it?”

Mrs. Dalton composed her face, and, with tears on her cheeks, answered,

“When I was a girl,