Free 31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan Page A

in his, examining them as if they were part of a strange species.
    “First of all, I have decided I am taking on the case.”
    “Oh, Henry, I suspected you would! Are you really defending that woman?”
    “Yes.”
    “You have decided this for sure? I hope you have thought it over—this case is a runaway train.”
    “I was going to discuss it with you again after I conferred with James, which I just had the chance to do, this morning.”
    “Is he in favor of this folly?”
    “No, he isn’t. Not at all. I can’t say he is in favor of my taking this case.”
    “Well, that’s something to commend him. At least he still has some sense behind that rigid façade.”
    “Elisabeth, we’ve come to an impasse.” He had been rubbing her hand, and she pulled it away with a stunned look on her face. “Not you, darling,” he said. “James and I. We’ve had a parting of the minds.”
    “But that’s been the nature of your partnership all along. I suppose you two will always disagree.”
    “No—we shan’t disagree again, because I am no longer with the firm.” Clinton slumped back in the armchair, as if overwhelmed by the morning’s events. “I have quit, or perhaps it was James that fired me.”
    She let out a gasp. “Henry, you are not serious? It came to that?”
    “It did. But believe me, it is for the best. I was too comfortable there. I was not doing good work, and I was becoming something of a clown in the office—an affable, but righteous, defender of the oppressed. James was not happy working with a criminal lawyer who defended anyone without a substantial merchant’s bankbook. So I shall strike out on my own. I didn’t plan for it to happen this way, but it is for the best.”
    “But what about the Burdell murder? How can you keep on the case? What will you do?” Elisabeth spoke softly, bewildered. He had just sacrificed his job and a large salary and a lesser wife would lash out, or even cry. She had a look on her face now that he had seen before—concerned, but ready to listen. When they had first met he would tell her a story about defending a hardened criminal, with all of its gruesome details, and she would be moved by his passion for securing the rights of both the innocent and the guilty. She would listen quietly, letting him ramble on, until he realized that he had piqued her intellectual curiosity, and she was mulling over the legal arguments, her mind leaping to the best conclusion.
    Now, he sensed an opening, and he ran with it. “Darling, this case is a runaway train. It’s a runaway train to the gallows. Everyone who has been inside 31 Bond Street in the few days since the murder—Coroner Connery, the District Attorney, the Mayor, the Chief of Police—have a vested interest in pointing the finger at Emma Cunningham. They’ve found the perfect scapegoat in a bedroom upstairs. It’s as if they had commissioned a newspaper artist to draw up a portrait of a fictional murderess, and pinned her name to it. They’ve captured Emma Cunningham in a large frame and pasted the word guilty at the bottom. They’ll pass the illustration off to the papers, all the while hoping that mob justice will finish the job.”
    “But what if she actually did it? You barely had a chance to interview her. Henry, what if you are defending evil?”
    “I only interviewed her for a short period, but she is a woman not unlike yourself. She is a woman whose home was turned upside down during a circumstance of violence. I saw her terror at that upheaval. Regardless of her feelings for the murdered man, I saw that her surroundings were her greatest security. A woman does not desecrate her own home. Why would she commit this violence if it put her children at jeopardy and brought about everything she feared most?”
    Elisabeth dropped a moccasin from her lap, and she sat, bewildered. “You really intend to keep on it?”
    “I intend to. I intend to get an office, small as it may be, and prepare a defense, and