The prosecution made its case very quickly. Mrs. Porter testified
that she worked at McKelvey Bros., the antibiotics plant, where the
defendant also worked. Yes, that was him. She had been attracted by the
noise from the culture room last--let's see--"Was it the seventeenth
day of June last?" prompted the prosecutor, and Chandler's attorney
instinctively gathered his muscles to rise, hesitated, glanced at
his client and shrugged. That was right, it was the seventeenth.
Incautiously she went right into the room. She should have known
better, she admitted. She should have called the plant police right
away, but, well, they hadn't had any trouble at the plant, you
know, and--well, she didn't. She was a stupid woman, for all that
she was rather good-looking, and insatiably curious. She had seen
Peggy Flershem on the floor. "She was all _blood_. And her clothes
were--And she was, I mean her--her body was--" With relentless tact the
prosecutor allowed her to stammer out her observation that the girl had
clearly been raped. And she had seen Chandler laughing and breaking up
the place, throwing racks of cultures through the windows, upsetting
trays. Of course she had crossed herself and tried a quick exorcism but
there was no visible effect; then Chandler had leaped at her. "He was
_hateful_! He was just _foul_!" But as he began to attack her the plant
police came, drawn by her screams.
Chandler's attorney did not question.
Peggy Flershem's deposition was introduced without objection from the
defense. But she had little to say anyway, having been dazed at first
and unconscious later. The plant police testified to having arrested
Chandler; a doctor described in chaste medical words the derangements
Chandler had worked on Peggy Flershem's virgin anatomy. There was no
question from Chandler's lawyer--and, for that matter, nothing to
question. Chandler did not hope to pretend that he had not ravished and
nearly killed one girl, then done his best to repeat the process on
another. Sitting there as the doctor testified, Chandler was able to
tally every break and bruise against the memory of what his own body
had done. He had been a spectator then, too, as remote from the event
as he was now; but that was why they had him on trial. That was what
they did not believe.
At twelve-thirty the prosecution rested its case, Judge Ellithorp
looking very pleased. He recessed the court for one hour for lunch, and
the guards took Chandler back to the detention cell in the basement of
the school.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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