His doctor was Francis McRae.
Neil and Rhoda lived in a white-painted brick house that was absurdly large for a young couple with no children and, if gossip could be credited, no prospects of any. Francis habitually stopped at the house twice a week professionally, although he later admitted that most of these visits were no more than doubtful psychological placebos, and frequently he was at the house in the evenings socially, without his stethoscope, so to speak. He admitted, in fact, with what seemed a perverse determination to see himself hanged, that Neil’s heart was in much better condition than Neil liked to admit, and that his patient, with only reasonable care, might have anticipated many years of life. It was the meat of the prosecution’s case, you see, that Neil Healy, dying too slowly to give satisfaction, if dying at all, had been nudged along by Dr. Francis McRae with the blessing and perhaps the help of Rhoda Healy. Pete Decker argued brilliantly that Francis and Rhoda were having an affair, and he was able to present testimony and evidence that supported, but did not prove, his argument. In this matter, again his most effective witness was Francis McRae himself. Francis denied that he and Rhoda were having an affair, but he said flatly, with go-to-hell belligerence, that he damn well wished they were. That wish, in the minds of eleven jurors, was unequivocally father to the deed.
Anyhow, to drop back a bit, Neil Healy suddenly died. Considering his medical history and the persistent impression of his precarious condition, this was no great surprise. Francis McRae signed the death certificate, and it appeared briefly that events would proceed normally to the end that is our common denominator. But no such luck. The elder Healys got their wind up and demanded an autopsy. Rhoda Healy, as the widow, refused to authorize one, and Francis McRae, once more with that strange obduracy that threatened to damn him, supported her refusal. The elder Healys, however, were rich and locally powerful, and had connections. They were instrumental in securing a court order, and Neil was opened for inspection. It was discovered that he had been given, by one means of ingestion or another, a lethal dose of white arsenic. It was murder. No doubt about it.
Well, who has better opportunity to poison a man than the doctor who is caring for him? And if the doctor and the man’s wife are having an affair, who has a better motive? And if it’s all circumstantial, and damn thin at that, what of it? It’s neat, it’s logical, and in the hands of an expert like Pete Decker, it’s deadly. I was astonished when I was summoned for jury duty, but I was glad of the chance to sit in on the case. In fact, I was so eager to serve that I told a necessary lie. I said, in response to a stock question, that I had no objection to the death penalty. That was all right, however, because if I had been convinced of Francis McRae’s guilt, I’d have voted guilty, death penalty or no.
I’ve already indicated the ingredients of the people’s case, and there’s no good in detailing it. I’ll only repeat that the execution, thanks to Pete Decker, was brilliant. As a minority of one, I thought the defense was stronger, but it was often poorly handled, and it had the critical weakness of sometimes seeming fanciful. It was contended that a doctor, if he wasn’t a fool, could easily devise a better way to kill a patient than by feeding him arsenic. It was argued, the defendant’s wishes to the contrary notwithstanding, that there was not a shred of real evidence to show that his relationship with the victim’s wife had ever been more than platonic. It could hardly be denied, however, that the victim had been fatally dosed with white arsenic, and it was in an attempt to offer an alternative to the defendant’s guilt that the defense constructed its most fanciful hypothesis. Neil Healy, it was contended, had been a vindictive man; on occasion, a vicious man. He had frequently betrayed overt hostility toward his wife. Character witnesses were introduced to support the contention and testify to the evidence of hostility. So far, so good. Tenable, at least. From there on, however, the defensive position was pure conjecture. It was argued that Neil Healy, aware that he was dying, or at least believing that he was dying, had devised in a tortured and distorted mind the devilish scheme of poisoning himself in such a way as to excite suspicion and implicate the wife he had wrongly distrusted and hated. She was the one he wanted tried for murder. Dr. Francis McRae, because of his position, was merely the unfortunate victim of circumstances.
We, the jury, listened. Later we voted and split. Eleven went one way, and one the other. I, the splinter, was subjected to every kind of pressure short of violence by the block. They reasoned, they cajoled, they bullied, they sweat and cursed and tried again. But I didn’t waver. I took the English position of not proved, and there I stood. At last we gave up and went home, and it was shortly thereafter that I went away at the age of thirty. When I was brought back at the age of thirty-two by my father’s death, the case had been nol-prossed, finished. That was, as I had just said in response to Pete Decker’s question, ten years ago.
Pete was looking out the window and across the rolling golf course toward a giant elm that spread its branches between the earth and the sun.
“There’s a lot of nonsense repeated about murder and murderers,” he said.
“Nonsense?” I said. “How so?”
“Well, it grows out of the consensus that murder is the supreme
