Part 14 (1/2)
”At night?”
”There's always some light. Anyway, she'd know her own f ather.” Miss Jenks corrected herself: ”She _knew_ her own father.”
”Did she tell you this?”
”Yes. I was the first one she told.”
”Did you question her about it in any detail?”
”I didn't, no. She was quite broken up, naturally. I didn't want to subject her to the strain.”
”But you didn't mind subjecting her to the strain of testifying to these things in court.”
”It was necessary, necessary to the prosecution's case. And it did her no harm.”
”Dr. G.o.dwin thinks it did her a lot of harm, that the strain she went through then is partly responsible for her breakdown.”
”Dr. G.o.dwin has his ideas and I have mine. If you want my opinion, he's a dangerous man, a troublemaker. He has no respect for authority, and I have no respect for a man like that.”
”You used to respect him. You sent your niece to him for treatment.”
”I know more about him now than I did then.”
”Do you mind telling me why she needed treatment?”
”No. I don't mind.” She was still trying to preserve a friendly surface, though we were both conscious of the disagreement simmering under it. ”Dolly wasn't doing well in school. She wasn't happy or popular. Which was natural enough with her parents--I mean, her father, making a shambles of their home together.”
”This isn't the backwoods,” she said as if she suspected maybe it was, ”and I thought the least I could do was see that she got a little help. Even the people on welfare get family counseling when they need it. So I persuaded my sister to take her into Pacific Point to see Dr. G.o.dwin. He was the best we had at that time. Constance drove her in every Sat.u.r.day morning for about a year. The child showed considerable improvement, I'll say that much for G.o.dwin. So did Constance. She seemed brighter and happier and surer of herself.”
”Was she getting treatment, too?”
”I guess she had a little, and of course it did her good to get into town every Sat.u.r.day. She wanted to move into town but there was no money for it. She left McGee and moved in with me instead. That took some of the strain off her. He couldn't stand to see that. He couldn't stand to see her getting her dignity back. He killed her like a dog in the manger.”
After ten years her mind was still buzzing like a fly around the b.l.o.o.d.y moment.
”Why didn't you continue Dolly's therapy? She probably needed it more than ever afterward.”
”It wasn't possible. I work Sat.u.r.day mornings. I have to get my paperwork done some lime.” She fell silent, confused and tongue-tied as honest people can be by their own deviousness.
”Also you had a disagreement with G.o.dwin about your niece's testimony at the trial.”
”I'm not ashamed of it, no matter what he says. It did her no harm to speak out about her father. It probably did her good. She had to get it out of her system somehow.”
”It isn't out of her system, though. She's still hung up on it.” Just as you are, Miss Jenks. ”But now she's changed her story.”
”Changed her story?”
”She says now that she didn't see her father the night of the murder. She denies that he had anything to do with it.”
”Who told you that?”
”G.o.dwin. He'd just been talking to her. She told him she lied in court to please the adults.” I was tempted to say more, but remembered in time that it would almost certainly be relayed to her friend the Sheriff.
She was looking at me as if I had questioned a basic faith of her life. ”He's twisting what she said, I'm sure. He's using her to prove that he was right when he was wrong.”
”I doubt that, Miss Jenks. G.o.dwin doesn't believe her new story himself.”
”You see! She's either crazy or she's lying! Don't forget she's got McGee blood in her!” She was appalled by her own outburst. She turned her eyes away, glancing around the pink room as though it might somehow vouch for the girlish innocence of her intentions. ”I didn't really mean that,” she said. ”I love my niece. It's just--it's harder than I thought to rake over the past like this.”
”I'm sorry, and I'm sure you love your niece. Feeling about her the way you do, and did, you couldn't have fed her a false story to tell in court.”
”Who says I did?”
”No one. I'm saying you couldn't have. You're not the sort of woman who could bring herself to corrupt the mind of a twelve-year-old child.”
”No,” she said. ”I had nothing to do with Dolly's accusation against her father. She came to me with it, the night it happened, within half-an-hour of the _time_ it happened. I never questioned it for a minute. It had all the accents of truth.”
But she had not. I didn't think she was lying, exactly. More likely she was suppressing something. She spoke carefully and in a low voice, so that the motto in the living room wouldn't hear her. She still wasn't meeting my eyes. A slow dull flush rose from her heavy neck to her face. I said: ”I doubt that it was physically possible for her to identify anyone, even her own father, at this distance on a dark night--let alone pick out a smoking gun in his hand.”
”But the police accepted it. Sheriff Crane and the D.A. both believed her.”
”Policemen and prosecutors are usually glad to accept the facts, or the pseudo-facts, that fit their case.”
”But Tom McGee was guilty. He was guilty.”
”He may have been.”
”Then why are you trying to convince me that he wasn't?” The flush of shame in her face was going through the usual conversion into a flush of anger. ”I won't listen.”
”You might as well listen. What can you lose? I'm trying to open up that old case because it's connected, through Dolly, with the Haggerty case.”
”Do you believe she killed Miss Haggerty?” she said.
”No. Do you?”
”Sheriff Crane seems to regard her as the main suspect.”
”Did he say so to you, Miss Jenks?”
”He as much as said so. He was feeling me out on what my reaction would be if he took her in for questioning.”
”And what was your reaction?”
”I hardly know, I was so upset. I haven't seen Dolly for some time. She went and married behind my back. She was always a good girl, but she may have changed.”
I had the feeling that Miss Jenks was talking out of her deepest sense of herself: She had always been a good girl, but she might have changed.