Double Jeopardy Read online

  DOUBLE JEOPARDY

  Martin M. Goldsmith

  Is it possible in this day of enlightened justice for a man to be punished twice for the same crime?

  Double Jeopardy answers this question, at the same time uncovering the greatest of many loopholes in our modern jurisprudence. In this very human but striking novel are portrayed the calamities that can be visited upon any ordinary citizen by the cold dispassionate judgement of our courts and our unimaginative and often stupid juries. Through the eyes of the victim, Peter Thatcher, this tense revelation unfolds, growing to ugly and utterly ridiculous proportions.

  “Peter Thatcher has murdered his wife,” people said. “I heard them quarreling,” announced one. “And I,” added another, “saw the blood.”

  To make matters worse, Thatcher himself could not be quite sure of his own innocence!

  Not a problem novel, not a mystery novel, but rather a cross between the two, this thrilling story will always be appreciated by those who read “The Postman Always Rings Twice.””

  To E.G.G.

  ... And no person shall be subject to be put twice in jeopardy for the same offence.”

  Constitution of the State of New York;

  Article I, Section 6

  PART ONE. THE ROOTS

  I SUPPOSE it was that five-point-nine that was to blame—;or the gunner who fired it; or maybe it was my own fault for lagging behind the rest of my battalion as we advanced deployed through that ploughed-up cemetery; but, somehow, I find myself laying it all before Anita's door. She would never have permitted me to marry her, feeling the way she did. As my mind wanders back over those days long ago I remember that I was certain I would die if she refused me; now I may die because she didn't.

  They are going to bury her tomorrow, or so I've been told, and they are holding me responsible for her death. The District Attorney, who visited me in my cell this morning, says that I am sure to get the Chair. But I am not afraid. On the other hand, my own lawyer is confident they will have to let me go free. In the event that he is wrong and they do sentence me to die, it will not matter much. After what I have been through, death no longer presents a terrifying picture. And this is very strange for I have always been afraid to die.

  If only I had been born fearless, like Carter or Mullins or Sergeant Wilkinson, maybe all this would not have happened. There is an old saying that Fortune favors the bold. But because the thought of dying and the rattle of machine-guns made me tremble, I crept into a shell-hole and remained there, digging my fingers into the soft earth while everyone else continued to advance.

  Practically the entire battalion was wiped out during the next half hour. Had I not broken ranks and hidden myself, protected by the cover of darkness, I would have been killed then and there with my comrades and spared the subsequent nightmare that became my life. I would have died a hero; not a murderer. But, naturally, I knew nothing of what the future had in store for me.

  It was while I huddled in that shell-hole that a five-point-nine shrieked close to my head. That is all I can remember until I suddenly came to my senses more than three months later in a small, French hospital forty kilometres from Paris. Little did I dream that that shell would form one of the most important links in a chain of circumstantial evidence which would indict me, try me, and convict me of a crime later to be committed four thousand miles away! A theologian would claim, no doubt, that God punished me for being a coward, and perhaps that assumption is correct. I don't pretend to know. All that I do know is that I've certainly been through hell since the war and that if I had known then what I know now and been given the choice either of advancing with the rest and stopping a bullet or lagging behind and living, I most certainly would have chosen the former.

  It has always been my custom to hide my unnatural timidity; but here, in this confession, explanation of my peculiar behaviour, or what have you, I have resolved to be absolutely frank and truthful. Since my childhood, any action, sport or utterance of words which might in some way lead to physical violence I have painstakingly avoided. It might have been for this reason that I chose the career of doctor with the altruistic ambition to help alleviate some of the world's suffering. However, after two years of pre-medicine, my widowed mother passed away and I was forced to give up my studies and use the small insurance in the opening up of a drugstore.

  It wasn't much of a store, compared with the glittering chrome and steel of modern places. The prescription room was only half the size of this cell from which I write and the little wooden counter, where my errand-boy dispensed bottled soda-pop and ice-cream, was scarcely longer than this cot. But it was mine. I was proud to be its sole proprietor. The first day I was in possession of the place I had a large green and white sign painted:

  THE ITHACA DRUG COMPANY

  Peter Thatcher

  Apothecary

  All this was late in 1915, when I was only twenty-four years old, and I suppose that my extreme youth did little toward establishing my reliability as a competent pharmacist. The people of the town—;and when I say this I do not mean the Cornell students—;a good many of them knowing me from the time I was a little boy, could scarcely have confidence enough to permit me to compound their ofttimes dangerous prescriptions. My small store would probably have failed in that first year had it not been for old Doc Turnbull who sent me all his work and was instrumental in spreading around town the fact that I, at least, never took a drink during business hours. In this manner he helped my trade, at the same time doing much to damage the reputation of his old-time enemy, Ray Cavender, who owned the apothecary shop on the opposite corner.

  Those were comparatively happy days. I was working very hard building up a business and time did not hang heavily on my hands. Also I was single then; my heart was my own and I was not even contemplating marriage. As a matter of fact, women have always awed me somewhat and I have generally avoided them. As a boy I was inordinately shy and whenever a girl schoolmate was thrust upon me as a partner for a two-step, my chums would jeer: “Look at him blush!” Whereupon, sadly, the color was sure to flood my cheeks.

  Perhaps it was this shyness that prevented me from having the multiple “puppy-loves” people are always talking about. At least I know, if there can be any satisfaction in that, that I have never been in love, even momentarily, with anyone other than the girl I eventually made my wife. You may be inclined to doubt that I loved even her. The press has been very unkind. The reporters I have allowed to interview me did not seem to understand that a man can kill someone he loves and still feel no pangs of remorse. No, I am not sorry I killed Anita. As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely sure I did kill her. Theoretically she killed herself and I was merely the instrument that brought about her end.

  But I am running ahead of my story. The statements I have just made sound contradictory and until you have all the facts I cannot hope that you will understand.

  Just as I manifested no interest in women, women manifested no interest in me. I am not bad to look at, I think. I am rather short but with a good build. I am rarely ill and even now, after many years of deciphering scrawled prescriptions, my eye-sight is perfect. But there has never been anything about me that would attract a girl. I am not very romantic and for this reason my life, up until the time I met Anita, was curiously empty of heart throbs.

  I lived all alone in my mother's house. Although I could have made excellent use of the money it would have brought, I could not part with it. Quite a number of times I was approached by real estate investors who offered “to take it off my hands.” While their propositions were inviting, I could not imagine myself living any other place. The house was very old, built way back in the Civil War days by my father, and not too large to be comfortable. It was situate
d on a quiet road lined with great elm trees; and it had a garden which sloped down to the bank of Lake Cayuga. In the summer I used to spend much of my time there after I had closed the store, watching other young people drift by in canoes or bathe on the opposite side of the cove. Their light laughter as they splashed about came pleasantly to my ears and made me feel very contented. Occasionally I thought of the European War as the buzzing of mosquitoes around my head suggested the droning flight of planes. It always seemed strange to me that humans can be social at one moment and fired with the desire to destroy at the next. And as I pondered this paradox of nature I was thankful that I lived in America where there was so little discord.

  Some evenings Doc Turnbull would stop by in passing on his evening round of patients and we would talk. I should say he would talk for most of the time I merely listened. He was a fat old man with a great mop of white hair and very bushy brows. It was often impossible to see his eyes but they were generally twinkling with good humour. He was not a very cultured person for he was gruff, outspoken and perpetually profane. However, even with his solecisms and epithets there was an uncanny truth in whatever he said. Many of his homely observations which at the time I decried I have since recognized to be correct. If he were alive today, I would write to him and tell him that I have at last discovered his greatness.

  “Pete,” I can hear him saying, “people never thank you for the truth. They expect you to lie; and if you don't live up to their expectations.... Well, by the Jesus, they tie a tin can to your tail. It's like a woman who asks you how she looks. If you don't praise her... off comes your head!”

  I ventured no comment to this because I had a sneaking feeling what he was leading up to. Grateful as I was to Doc Turnbull, I did not want him telling me how to run my business. I wanted to run it myself.

  “That's why you've just lost old lady Cahill as a customer, boy. What? You didn't know you'd lost her? Well, you have. You see, Pete, I've been treating that bitch for almost fifteen years. Treating her for what, I don't know. There ain't really nothing the matter with her except one helluva disposition. She just ain't happy 'less she's got something to complain about. To use one of them new-fangled names, she's a hypochondriac. Why, say, if I didn't hand her a fancy Latin label for all her ailings, she'd up and have that young squirt Carpenter over inside ten minutes. So, as far as I'm concerned, she's suffering from a chronic omnia gallia in tres partem complicated by a slight e pluribus unum.” Doc paused and spit reflectively before adding, “You shouldn't have tipped her off that what I prescribed for her was only a mixture of salt, bicarb and water. She raised hell, I'm telling you. I had to change it to sugar, bicarb and water. And she was so peeved at you for telling her she looked the picture of health that I just know she'll take her trade somewhere else.”

  I am reluctant to admit that there were other incidents like the one described. At least five or six times I was unwittingly instrumental in getting the Doc in hot water with his patients, not realizing that there was such a thing as being over-sympathetic. I was certain that it would make any person happier to know that there was nothing really serious about his or her condition. How little I knew of life! But Doc was always forgiving and while occasionally disgusted with me for being so inapt a pupil, he never ceased his frequent visits to my home until after my marriage.

  Anita never liked Doctor Turnbull and I am positive he sensed it. After he had gone home, she would very often become abusive. Also, whenever I failed to hang up my clothes or neglected to wipe my feet before entering the house she would accuse me of rapidly becoming “a pig like that Turnbull quack.” In the beginning, I tried to put in a quiet word of defense for the old fellow who was my friend, reminding her that were it not for him the drugstore would fail. Soon, though I took to holding my tongue. It only enraged Anita and, being a person set in her opinions, it did little good trying to make her like him as I did. Besides, since I was in love with her, it always distressed me to see her upset. Hence, Doc's visits became fewer, longer intervals elapsed between them, and soon he did not come at all. The only chats I ever had with him thereafter were at the store when I was too busy and he too much in a hurry to linger long.

  But to get back to Anita. I first set eyes upon her on April 17, 1917, when business was booming and the nation was infected with war hysteria. You may think it strange that I am able to remember the exact date some twenty years later; but I have in my hand the prescription she brought in to be filled. It was made out to Miss Anita Hunt by Leo Carpenter, M.D., and called for a capsule (terpin, hydrate and codeine) generally useful in relieving a minor chest congestion. I remember that when she passed it over the counter she remarked that she was paying the price for an early swim in the lake.

  I will spare you her description. Besides, you have probably seen her pictures in the newspapers and marvelled at her beauty. One of those pictures was taken shortly after we were married so you can see why my heart stopped beating as I looked into her eyes. I think my hand must have shook as I went about the business of filling the prescription. I was infinitely grateful that there was no one in the store who would cry, “Look at him blush!” for I feel sure that I would have dropped through the floor.

  I remember that my fingers felt all thumbs as I worked, for her clear voice distracted me. She casually remarked that she had just come to town a few days before and asked me if I knew of any nice furnished rooms. She went on to explain that at present she was stopping at the Colonial House which was far too expensive for her new job at the Knit Shoppe. After I had blurted out the suggestion that Mrs. Michaelson's boarding house on North Tioga was perhaps the place she was seeking, she thanked me warmly, handed me twenty cents for the package and left the store. In my confusion I said nothing. The fact that I usually charged a quarter for the capsules was forgotten. I only knew that the girl was the most fascinating customer it had ever been my privilege to wait on.

  I finished the remainder of the day in somewhat of a trance. I vaguely recall having filled a prescription for fat Mrs. Burtleson and removed a particle of dust from Joe Crespi's eye but the rest remains a blank. My record book, which they have permitted me to keep in my cell and which I hope will jog my memory of those days I am trying to describe, states that I sold eight bottles of cough syrup on that particular day, two hot-water bottles, six toothbrushes, fourteen rolls of bandages, and that I filled twelve prescriptions. If I did, I can't remember. But I know that when I sat near the lake that night, and smoked with old Doc Turn-bull, I found myself strangely inattentive and, for the first time, glad when he went home.

  I was thinking how wonderful it might be for any man to call such a woman “wife.” The usual vision of pipe, slippers and soft music on the gramophone, a large dog, the evening paper and Anita darning socks lingered to drug my mind; pleasant pictures even though slightly absurd. I slumped down in my chair and smoked cigarette after cigarette until it was very late. One by one the lights across Cayuga winked out. The faint breeze that had been present all evening gradually whipped itself into a wind. In the elms the night crickets fell silent and only the quiet slap of the ripples on the shore came to my ears.

  It was not until after I had sneezed several times that I realized I was catching cold. But more important still, it dawned on me that I was falling in love. I rose from the chair, cramped and stiff, went into the house and took two asperin tablets before crawling sleepily into bed.

  During the weeks that followed Anita became the most popular girl in town. She often came into my store just before closing time in the hot evenings for some ice-cream or a bottle of cool soda. Usually she was with young Doctor Carpenter whom I had known at medical school.

  Carpenter was a pleasant enough chap and I rather liked him—;despite Doc Turnbull's disgruntled remarks. He was the son of the town's wealthiest realtor whose poor health forced him to spend much of his time away from home at various resorts and spas. Therefore, Leo generally lived alone, surrounded by servants in the big brick house o
n the Heights. The boy was tall and handsome with a neat blond moustache. It was his habit to finger it whenever he was perplexed. I recall hearing the story that one day he was called into consultation at the request of one of Doc Turnbull's patients. Leo took so long to arrive at the simple diagnosis that the old medico became annoyed. “For the love of God!”, shouted Turnbull suddenly. “Will you quit yanking that damned thing and tell the lady her bellyache's an acute appendicitis!” In revenge, Leo spread it about town that old Doc's bedside manners were as comforting as those of a callous veterinary. A feud ensued, lasting for several months. Then it died as suddenly as it had started and the two merely regarded each other with cold disdain.

  Of course it was only natural that Leo's good looks and custom tailoring should make him popular with the town girls and even with the young men. He was the proud owner of a Winton Six touring car, a beautiful $2800 machine in which he made his professional rounds. In the evenings during spring and summer it was his custom to pack his car with young people and roar away in the direction of the Tompkins Country Club. I say, in the direction of because I was never invited along on any of those rides. I am afraid that I was never popular with any but the older people who were my customers and with whom I would sympathetically discuss their various ailments. It may be that I was too serious about myself and my little store; but I did want to succeed and often I would dream of the time when the store would be larger.

  You may be sure that I went through considerable agony watching the girl with whom I was in love constantly being escorted by the handsome physician. The more times I saw her in his company the more I loved her and the less attention I paid to business. My regular patrons soon noticed my distraction. Doc Turnbull, with his customary rare insight into human nature, almost hit upon my trouble. “You should soon be thinking of getting married, son,” he grunted as he chewed away at his cigar. “We all need the womenfolk, you know. It ain't natural for you to sweat all day in your dope-shop and then go home and cook your own grub. Look around and pick yourself a slave!”