The jurors’ seats are to be on the stage, as in a real courtroom. Thus we give the public all the excitement of a murder trial. We heighten the public’s interest by leaving the decision in its own hands and add to the suspense by the fact that no audience, at any performance of the play, can be sure of its outcome.
Characters
JUDGE HEATH
DISTRICT ATTORNEY FLINT
DEFENSE ATTORNEY STEVENS
KAREN ANDRE
DR. KIRKLAND
JOHN HUTCHINS
HOMER VAN FLEET
ELMER SWEENEY
MAGDA SVENSON
NANCY LEE FAULKNER
JOHN GRAHAM WHITFIELD
JAMES CHANDLER
SIEGURD JUNGQUIST
“GUTS” REGAN
COURT ATTENDANTS
TIME: Present
PLACE: New York Courtroom
Act One
Scene: The stage represents a New York courtroom. It faces the audience, so that the public is in the position of spectators in a real courtroom. In the center of the back is the Judge’s desk on a high platform; behind it is the door to the Judge’s chambers; by the side of the desk, at left, is the witness stand, facing the audience; behind it is the door to the jury room. In front of the Judge’s desk is the desk of the Court Reporter; at right the desk of the Court Clerk. Behind it is the door through which witnesses enter the courtroom. Farther downstage, at right, is a table for the defendant and attorneys; at left another table for the prosecution. At the wall, left, are the twelve seats for the jurors. Farther downstage is a door through which spectators enter the courtroom. At the opposite wall, at right, are a few chairs for spectators. Steps lead down from the stage in the right and left aisles. When the curtain rises the court session is ready to open, but the JUDGE has not yet made his appearance. The prosecution and defense are ready at their respective tables.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY FLINT is a heavy, middle-aged man with the kindly appearance of a respectable father of a family and the shrewd, piercing manner of a pawnbroker. DEFENSE ATTORNEY STEVENS is tall, gray-haired, displaying the grooming and sophisticated grace of a man of the world. He is watching his client, who does not pay any attention to him and, sitting at the defense table, calmly, almost insolently studies the audience. The client, the defendant KAREN ANDRE, is twenty-eight. One’s first impression of her is that to handle her would require the services of an animal trainer, not an attorney. Yet there is nothing emotional or rebellious in her countenance; it is one of profound, inexorable calm; but one feels the tense vitality, the primitive fire, the untamed strength in the defiant immobility of her slender body, the proud line of her head held high, the sweep of her tousled hair. Her clothes are conspicuous by their severe, tailored simplicity; a very costly simplicity, one can notice, but not the elegance of a woman who gives much thought to her clothes; rather that of one who knows she can make any rag attractive and does it unconsciously.
When the curtain rises the lights in the audience do not go out.
BAILIFF: Court attention!
[EVERYONE rises as JUDGE HEATH enters. BAILIFF raps]
Superior Court Number Eleven of the State of New York. The Honorable Judge William Heath presiding.
[The JUDGE takes his seat. BAILIFF raps and EVERYONE sits down]
JUDGE HEATH: The people of the State of New York versus Karen Andre.
FLINT: Ready, your Honor.
STEVENS: Ready, your Honor.
JUDGE HEATH: Mr. Clerk, draw a jury.
[The CLERK steps to the proscenium with a list in his hand, and addresses the audience]
CLERK: Ladies and gentlemen, you are to be the jurors in this case. Twelve of you will be drawn to perform this duty. You will kindly step up here, take your seats, and receive your instructions from Judge Heath.
[He reads twelve names. The JURORS take their places. If some are unwilling and do not appear, the CLERK calls a few more names. When the jurors are seated, the lights in the audience go out. JUDGE HEATH addresses the jury]
JUDGE HEATH: Ladies and gentlemen, you are the jurors who will try this case. At its close, you will retire to the jury room and vote upon your verdict. I instruct you to listen to the testimony carefully and pronounce your judgment to the best of your ability and integrity. You are to determine whether the defendant is Guilty or Not Guilty and her fate rests in your hands . . . The District Attorney may now proceed.
[DISTRICT ATTORNEY FLINT rises and addresses the jury]
FLINT: Your Honor! Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! On the sixteenth of January, near midnight, when the lights of Broadway blazed an electric dawn over the gay crowd below, the body of a man came hurtling through space and crashed — a disfigured mess — at the foot of the Faulkner Building. That body had been Sweden’s great financier — Bjorn Faulkner. He fell fifty stories from his luxurious penthouse. A suicide, we were told. A great man unwilling to bend before his imminent ruin. A man who found a fall from the roof of a skyscraper shorter and easier than a descent from his tottering throne of the world’s financial dictator. Only a few months ago, behind every big transaction of gold in the world, stood that well-known figure: young, tall, with an arrogant smile, with kingdoms and nations in the palm of one hand — and a whip in the other. If gold is the world’s life blood, then Bjorn Faulkner, holding all its dark, hidden arteries, regulating its ebb and flow, its every pulsation, was the heart of the world. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the world has just had a heart attack. And like all heart attacks, it was rather sudden. No one suspected the gigantic swindle that lay at the foundation of the Faulkner enterprises. A few days after his death, the earth shook from the crash of his business; thousands of investors were stricken with the paralysis which follows an attack, when that monstrous heart stopped beating. Bjorn Faulkner had had a hard struggle facing the world. But he had a much harder struggle to face in his heart, a struggle which this trial will have to uncover. Two women ruled his life — and death. Here is one of them, ladies and gentlemen.
[Points at KAREN]
Karen Andre, Faulkner’s efficient secretary and notorious mistress. But six months ago Faulkner came to America to get a loan and save his fortune. Fate sent him a means to save his own heart — in the person of the lovely girl who is now his widow, Nancy Lee Faulkner, only daughter of John Graham Whitfield, our great philanthropist. Faulkner thought he had found salvation and a new life in the virtuous innocence of his young bride. And the best proof of it is that two weeks after his wedding he dismissed his secretary — Karen Andre. He was through with her. But, ladies and gentlemen, one is not easily through with a woman like Karen Andre. We can only guess at what hatred and revenge smouldered in her heart; but they leaped into flame on the night of January sixteenth. Bjorn Faulkner did not kill himself. He was murdered. Murdered by the very delicate and capable hands which you see here before you.
[He points at KAREN]
The hands that helped to raise Bjorn Faulkner high over the world; the hands that threw him down, from as great a height, to crash into a pavement cold as this woman’s heart. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we are going to prove.
[FLINT pauses; then calls]
Our first witness will be Doctor Kirkland.
[DR. KIRKLAND, elderly, kindly, and indifferent, makes his way toward the witness stand]
CLERK: You solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?
KIRKLAND: I do.
FLINT: Kindly state your name.
KIRKLAND: Thomas Kirkland.
FLINT: What is your occupation?
KIRKLAND: Medical examiner of this county.
FLINT: In the course of your duty, what were you called upon to do on the night of January sixteenth?
KIRKLAND: I was called to examine the body of Bjorn Faulkner.
FLINT: What did you find?
KIRKLAND: A body mangled to an extreme degree.
FLINT: What did you establish as the cause of death?
KIRKLAND: A fall from a great height.
FLINT: How long had Faulkner been dead when you examined his body?
KIRKLAND: I reached it about half an hour after the fall.
FLINT: Judging by the condition of the body, could you say exactly how long it had been dead?
KIRKLAND: No, I could not. Owing to the cold weather, the blood had coagulated immediately, which makes a difference of several hours impossible to detect.
FLINT: Therefore, it is possible that Faulkner had been dead longer than half an hour?
KIRKLAND: It is possible.
FLINT: Could his death have been caused by anything other than this fall?