Arthur Conway sat, his head in his hands, as Assistant District Attorney Davis swung into the conclusion of his summing up to the jury. Conway wondered why he had ever thought of it as a perfect murder: it didn’t sound like one as Davis told it.
“The one thing you have to decide is whether this defendant has told the truth,” Davis said.
Conway reflected that he had told the truth, and practically nothing but the truth. Not, of course, the whole truth, although, in a way, he had been closer to it than the prosecution.
“... How can anyone believe this man’s story that he was in the theatre at the time the murder car was parked by the murderer?” Davis continued.
How, indeed? Conway wondered. His own attorney — the one he had engaged when Gates refused to take the case except on his own terms — hadn’t believed him; had urged him to accept the prosecutor’s offer right up until the opening of the trial. But — might there be one — just one — of those twelve men and women who had believed him?
“... His only defense, his only alibi, is that he was in the theatre at that time. But he has been unable to produce one single witness to support that alibi...”
That was true, too. And there had been no way to shake the testimony of the couple who established the time the car had been parked; no way, that is, except to reveal that he himself had parked it at ten.
“... We have shown that the defendant had a motive — two motives, in fact...”
All the motives in the world except the right one, Conway reflected.
“... The defendant has claimed that he and his wife were on good terms — a bald-faced He, for she hated the defendant, intended to divorce him and planned to marry Taylor. When he discovered, in the drugstore, that she had withdrawn the money from the bank, she saw no reason for any further concealment, and she told him about Taylor. And then he strangled her — murdered her in cold blood.”