Blue Moon (23 page)

“Here and there, y'know. A few places.”

“Isn't it true you've had over half a dozen jobs in that time?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Do you have a criminal record?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“Possession of a revolver.”

“Were you arrested last spring on the charge of forging your mother-in-law's name on cheques?”

“Yes.”

Boehler was a madman—but one, I now realize, of a very unusual kind. Basically illiterate, he nevertheless conceived of himself as a story-teller, a true adherent of the oral tradition. He needed an audience and so he composed a narrative that allowed him access to the public. I had helped to unleash the well of creativity previously buried within him, but, an artist of a particularly ruthless kind, he did not mind if I lost my life in the process. I was the excuse for him to display his not inconsiderable talents.

His narrative line was ingenious. He had carefully read the court reports in the
Spectator
and injected himself into those events in a way difficult to dispute. If believed, he could all on his own have supplied the necessary information to put the hangman's noose around my neck. I suspect Wood performed substantive editing upon the story Boehler confessed to him—fine-tuning it for publication, as it were.

Mother followed Boehler to the stand. The hissing of the steam pipes warming the room made a thundering sound, but no one paid them any mind. The reporter for
The Globe and Mail
was so overcome with emotion that her prose took on an even more purple tincture than usual:
“It seemed an almost tangible struggle of wills. The mother and
daughter continued to look at each other, one of them just out of her death cell, the other freed on the same murder charge. The resemblance between the two women was suddenly obvious. They have the same sharp black line of eyebrows, the sudden snapping black eyes. They are about the same height. However, where Mrs. Maclean has thin, taut lips, Evelyn's lower lip isfull and protuberant, sticking outfurther and further when she becomes annoyed at the testimony.99
Even fifty years later, those sentences make me cringe, capturing as they do the many similarities—well beyond the physical—between Mother and myself.

Robinette made short-work of Mother when he asked: “Isn't it true that you yourself were originally charged in the murder of John Dick?” As soon as she replied in the affirmative, he rejoined: “And isn't it true that you are presently held on bond as a material witness for the Crown?” Then he shifted tactics: “Isn't it true you're a teller of tall tales? In other words, an accomplished liar? According to your neighbours, you don't know the difference between fiction and reality!”

“It's Evelyn who's the fiction writer in the family!”

“If that's so, isn't she her mother's daughter?”

“Stop badgering the witness!” the judge bellowed.

My lawyer's tactics in cross-examination and evidence suppression filled me with confidence, but, as one reporter put it, the whites of my eyes did gleam in horror after the jury retired after having been charged by McRuer. In his final comment to the jury, Robinette came perilously close to insulting me when he observed, “One would not hang a dog on the evidence you have heard.” Despite my animad-version to being compared to a canine, I prayed he was correct.

I tried to hold myself up as I walked from the courtroom, but I alternately wept and vomited in the prisoner's room. A few hours later, we were summoned back for the jury's decision. None of those twelve men would look in my direction. I heard several people whisper: “They're going to hang her!”

Then, all of a sudden, I caught the eye of the youngest juror. He nervously returned my smile. The foreman announced I had been found not guilty. I raised my hands in triumph, then covered my face to hide the tears of joy that overpowered me. The Toronto
Daily Telegraph
truthfully claimed the men of Hamilton were relieved I had been acquitted whereas the women were greatly disappointed. The steel workers always supported the underdog, whereas their wives
craved gentility. As I left court that evening, a skeletally ravished old woman waiting in the crowd hurled a bag full of icy mud at me.

My triumph was short-lived. Four days after I was acquitted, I was again in court to answer to the charge of murder in the death of Peter David White MacLean.

Public sentiment had to be appeased. My lawyer was a realist, supremely aware of the ways of the world. In his no-nonsense way, Mr. Robinette reminded me. “You have to pay a price for all the trouble you've caused. It all boils down to that simple fact. My job is to exact the smallest possible penalty from the blind goddess. But punishment there will be.”

Although public sentiment in Hamilton had been evenly divided for and against me in the mysterious murder of John Dick, the same did not hold true in the case of the baby boy's death. When I was found not-guilty in John's case, many passing cars bestowed supportive honks as my car returned to Barton Street.

Local opinion wanted a sense of closure to the entire Evelyn Dick muddle. For many residents of Hamilton, I had been seen as a quasi-Robin Hood figure: I had slept with the rich, obtained their money, lived in a high style and, in general, taken advantage of my betters. Factory workers could identify with my plight. In this scenario, John Dick had been a nosy intruder who deserved what he got. Public will—fickle as it may be at the best of times—could not (I think rightly) view the murder of a baby in the same light—even if it could not be proven I had killed the child. After all I was his mother. I had an obligation to protect him. I had failed in a sacred duty.

How much evil can lurk in a human heart, especially one which seems on the surface so much like my own? That was the intriguing question I asked many citizens of Hamilton. A woman who prostitutes herself is simply flirting with Mammon. A dangerous game. A woman who conspires to murder her husband is simply doing what many other wives have dreamed of doing. But a woman who callously strangles a newborn? She is a monster.

She is also a mystery. Simply put, evil is a dark, dank, empty hole in the soul. No feelings reside there. Add the ingredient of the malevolent but attractive woman. Does her beauty camouflage her sinfulness? Or does she pay for her physical attributes by entering into a Faust-like deal with the devil? How can beauty be evil? These are unnerving questions; and I had the misfortune to pose them.

In order to lighten the forthcoming penalty, Mr. Robinette insisted I be interviewed by a psychiatrist, a so-called expert on the criminal mind. Today, such people attach the word “forensic” to themselves. When I was examined by Dr. Robert Alexander Finlayson, who had practised in Hamilton for twenty-three years, I was startled by his strange appearance. He was incredibly short—five feet at most—and almost as round in girth. Even those dimensions were rendered ordinary by his pure white hair, which trailed down his back to his waist; by his goatee, which gave him a Mephistopheles-like look; by the remains of several meals and the mounds of dandruff that had attached themselves to the shoulders and back of his three-piece black suit; and by the excessively condescending manner in which he spoke.
If he wanted to remind a casual acquaintance of the Falstaff who had been rejected by Henry V, he succeeded.

“Madam, your attorney has commissioned me to provide him with a candid profile of your psyche, I hope you will assist me in this noble endeavour.”

“I shall be happy to do so. But I am curious to know why you say 'noble'?”

“You don't think too highly of yourself if you object to that word.”

“No, I think you are using the adjective incorrectly.”

“Are you always inclined to began a dispute with others as soon as you meet them?”

“No, not as a general rule.”

“Good. Shall we begin?”

At that point, Finlayson showed me a series of ink blots. I must admit I was rendered a bit taciturn by this bizarre person, but I did respond to all the pictures he showed me. Soon, however, he was quite displeased when I remarked—in response to an ink blot that reminded me of the top of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan—that it looked like the top of a skyscraper. He obviously thought I was being evasive.

“Does it bring anything else to mind?”

“No, nothing I can think of.”

“You are being less than honest with me. Think again.”

“I'm sorry, but it looks like the top of a skyscraper.”

He was now thoroughly exasperated. “It obviously reminds you of an erect penis, and you are unwilling to state the obvious.”

“That would never have occurred to me.”

“You have much knowledge of penises, do you not—in all kinds of sizes, circumcised and uncircumcised?”

He was obviously prurient. “I see no reason to discuss such matters with you.”

“Again, you are being evasive.”

“No. I don't see any point in talking about such things.”

“Ah, you use the word 'point.' You are free-associating. 'Point' equals penis. Perhaps an erect one about to ejaculate.” He paused. “Were you ever interfered with by your father?”

“I'm not sure. I think he may have fondled me, but I have little memory of any such incident.” Obviously convinced I was circumventing
him yet again, Finlayson quickly concluded the session. “I shall next see you in the halls of justice, Madam.”

My next, more welcome, visitor was Rosie, whom I had not seen in over a year. Mother had told me that she and Stephen had married the previous summer. Although my old chum assured me of her complete happiness, something was amiss. Unlike me, she had lost a great deal of weight, and her habitual jolliness was forced. She was also wearing a great deal of pancake makeup—something she had never done before—and after a few minutes I could ascertain the powder was concealing a black and blue mark along her left cheek bone.

“I miss you so much, Evelyn. Nothing is the same without you.”

I feel the same way. Some of the girls in this corridor are very sweet, but I have not found a kindred spirit.”

“What are your chances of getting out of here?”

“Not very good. I expect Til be convicted of the baby's death.”

“But there's no real evidence against you.”

“That's true, but Mr. Robinette tells me I'll have to pay a price for all the trouble I've unleashed.”

“Well, Stephen and I are completely behind you.”

“And how is your husband?”

“Business is booming. There's a real demand for raw steel from the States, and his sales are excellent.”

“How about other things?”

“You mean personal things?”

“Yes.”

“You've never been Stephen's biggest fan, Evie, but I know that even you would be impressed at how much he's settled down. Become such an ordinary person.” Her lie was made abundantly obvious when she unconsciously raised her hand to the concealed bruise.

“Don't be like me, Rosie. Take proper care of yourself. Don't let anybody tell you what to do.”

My friend blushed. Knowing perfectly well how to encode this directive, she was grateful for the concern but resentful of the interference. A few minutes later, she stood up to take her leave. She came over to me, took my hands in hers, and kissed me. Her hot tears brushed my face.

Although Bohozuk and myself were jointly charged in the baby's death, my trial was held separately before Mr. Justice LeBel. Adding preliminary hearing, this was my fourth time within a year to occupy the prisoner's bench on a capital charge. Mother appeared as the first witness for the prosecution. She painstakingly listed the attire I had both made and purchased in anticipation of the baby's birth: a white embroidered dress, a slip, a vest, a pair of booties, a blue and white woolen jacket, and a blue and white bonnet. Her testimony then took a curious turn: “Before she went to the hospital, Evelyn told me she had made an arrangement with the Children's Aid to take the baby away from the hospital the day she was coming home.” The Crown attorney asked if, to her knowledge, this had been done. “Dear me, I have no way of knowing, but I never saw my grandchild. Evelyn arrived home in the taxi by herself.”

Robinette found it impossible to shake her during cross-examination, but he did elicit some potentially useful information.

“Your daughter was making every preparation for the normal care and delivery of an infant, wasn't she?”

“Yes, so I thought.”

“And it was your husband, Donald MacLean, who said that that child was not to come in the house?”

“Yes.”

“Did your husband ever say why he did not want that child in the house?”

“Well, we already had Heather there. He thought one baby was enough.”

“Did you ever hear him say that to Evelyn?”

“Yes.”

“Your husband broke into the attic on Carrick Avenue—the home occupied by you, your granddaughter and Evelyn at the time of the arrest—and ordered you away when you confronted him. Is this true?”

“Yes”

“What exactly did he say?”

“Told me to get the hell out of there.”

Dr. Deadman testified about the state of the cadaver of the baby; various doctors offered evidence for and against me, but the most damaging evidence was provided by Samuel Henson, the owner of the apartments on James Street South. He told a startled court that he
had voiced his objection to having two children on his premises when he had interviewed me as a potential tenant. “She told me I need not be concerned. The baby, she assured me, was dead within her womb.” He was telling the truth, and Mr. Robinette wisely insinuated I had merely been “pulling Mr. Henson's leg because she wanted to obtain the tenancy of a wanted, hard-to-get apartment.”

In his address to the jury, Mr. Robinette planted a seed in their minds—perhaps they should consider manslaughter as a reasonable verdict as opposed to first-degree murder? The Crown attorney tried emotional blackmail: “We hear a lot about the rights of the criminal and of the accused person these days, but we hear comparatively little about the rights of the rest of us.” In his summation, LeBel was not opposed to the verdict of manslaughter, but he cautioned the jury: “We are not here to investigate or pass judgement upon the moral conduct of the accused. If you think her conduct has been immoral, you must not take that into consideration for a moment in your deliberations. This is a case of murder, not of morals.” But he did point out that I had left hospital with a healthy, normal baby, who had vanished into thin air until a decomposed body of a newborn baby boy was found a few years later encased in cement in my bedroom on Carrick Avenue.