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Mary Elizabeth’s breaking one of the best teacups was nearly the last straw. After she had cleaned up the mess, Mrs. Taylor hustled her daughter upstairs to get her ready for Sunday school.
“Now look, Mary Elizabeth,” Mrs. Taylor said, “you’re all nice and clean, and I want you to stay that way.” Helen Taylor caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over Mary Elizabeth’s chest of drawers and pursed her lips ruefully. When she was tired like this it always looked as though she were older than she ought to be. She was in her middle twenties, but sometimes she looked thirty or over, as for instance now, after a morning of struggling with her hyperactive five-year-old. Helen Taylor felt a stirring of frustrated and resentful anger, but she put it down. She did not believe in anger. Helen ran a hand through her hair and looked back at Mary Elizabeth.
While she was buttoning up the little girl’s dress John called up the stairs. “I’m running down to the drug store for the paper, hon,” he said. “Be right back.”
Before Helen could reply she heard the door slam, and a second or two later the car door opened and closed, the motor revved up, and he was gone down the Sunday street. Helen sighed and listened for a moment to a bird singing outside the window in the summer sunlight.
“Mommy, can I go outside?” Mary Elizabeth looked up at her mother pleadingly.
Helen had been planning to have John watch Mary while she got herself ready for church, and she hesitated for a second. “Okay, Mary Elizabeth, but you’re all dressed up clean for Sunday school, so you stay right in the front yard. And don’t get your pretty yellow dress dirty or mommy will murder you. Right?”
“Right,” Mary Elizabeth said, and grinned. Helen listened to Mary’s footsteps running down the stairs, heard the front door open and close, and then she went into her own room to get ready.
John came back after having been gone for half an hour or so. He had run into a friend at the drugstore, and they had chatted over a cup of coffee. When he opened the front door of his house, the paper under his arm, he found Mary Elizabeth hanging in the hallway, a piece of clothesline knotted around her neck and a big mud stain on her bodice. He tried to scream, but the sound was strangled and came out a croak.
Helen was sitting in the rocking chair just inside the door into the living room. Her eyes were calm as they met John’s. “Well, I told her what would happen if she got dirty,” Helen said. “Don’t blame me.”
When the police came, elbowing their way through the crowd of muttering and whispering neighbors, Helen was still sitting in the chair and John was sobbing and coughing, exhausted, as he paced back and forth across the room. He had cut Mary Elizabeth down and put her on the couch. When the police asked Helen what had happened, she told them, and their eyes were incredulous.
“How could you get so angry over a little dirt?” one detective asked her.
“Angry? I wasn’t angry,” Helen replied. “I don’t believe in anger. I told her what would happen, and it happened,” she said.
The police, and some of the neighbors who had moved into the hall, stared at her in fascinated horror, and John stopped pacing, incomprehension written all over his face. “You understand, don’t you?” Helen asked uncertainly, but she could see that they did not. She sighed, and the police grimly took her by the arm and led her out the door, shielding her from the neighbors, who had begun to look menacing.
It was a sensational case. During the relatively short trial the courthouse was packed with people, the newspapers ran thick black headlines, and neither Helen’s lawyer nor the prosecutor could understand her attitude. She offered no defense whatsoever, and the psychiatrists were as puzzled as the legal experts. There seemed to be no real motive for the slaying other than Mrs. Taylor’s repeated statement that she had told Mary Elizabeth what would happen if she got her dress dirty, and it had happened. She seemed to be, and the tests proved she was, completely rational. The neighbors testified they had heard nothing more than Mrs. Taylor rather sternly and resignedly calling Mary Elizabeth into the house just before the crime.
Mrs. Taylor’s behavior at the trial was perfectly calm — the only peculiar thing was that she seemed genuinely puzzled that no one understood.
The result of the trial was predictable, under the circumstances. The State had a capital punishment law on the books, though it had seldom been invoked, and no woman had been executed under it in over a century. But when the jury filed into the courtroom after a short absence everyone knew what had to happen.
As the foreman stood up everyone fell into a hush that was absolute. John stared alternately at his wife seated at the table with her lawyer and at the judge, who asked Mrs. Taylor to rise and face the jury. Helen stood quietly as all eyes focused on the foreman. “How do you find?” the judge asked.
“We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, your honor,” the foreman said in a cool, firm voice. “We recommend no clemency, and so say we all,” he added and sat down.
The judge rapped twice on his bench as a murmur swept the courtroom. “So be it,” he said. “Sentencing will occur immediately,” and he turned to look down at Helen.
“Helen Taylor,” he said, “the jury has found you guilty of one of the most heinous crimes ever to come before this court. Justice must take its course, and under the present conditions, there is only one course it can take. The law is clear, and it is inexorable and rational. For the deed you have committed the State demands the ultimate penalty. No mitigation or mercy can be shown to someone such as yourself.
“Society is dispassionate and just. You are hereby sentenced to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, date to be set subsequently by this Court.”
“Why, you do understand, after all!” Helen exclaimed as the judge adjourned the court and the babble drowned out her words.
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