The Evangeline (12 page)

Chapter Eleven

T
HE COURT REPORTER WAS SETTING UP HER machine. The bailiff stood off to the side, stifling a yawn.

‘I know what happened out there,’ Darnell whispered to Marlowe. ‘Offenbach came to see me. He told me everything.’

The last of the spectators squeezed into place. The bailiff straightened up and became alert.

‘He asked me how you were doing,’ Darnell continued when Marlowe made no reply. He pulled away, just far enough to look Marlowe in the eye.‘He said if there was anything he could do for you—anything at all—he would. He said to tell you that you were in his prayers.’

The stoic shield fell away. Marlowe’s eyes filled with emotion, and a slight tremble broke the line of his mouth.

The door at the side burst open. Two hundred people rose as one. Homer Maitland, in full stride, hurried to the bench, issuing instructions to first bring in the jury and then the witness.

‘Mr Darnell, do you wish to cross-examine?’ he inquired after Aaron Trevelyn had been reminded that he was still under oath.

Darnell was already on his feet. The fingers of his right hand drummed on the front corner of the counsel table. An eager, catlike grin crossed his mouth as he stared down at the floor. His fingers stopped moving; he pulled his hand away from the table and placed both hands on his hips. He rocked forward, peering at Trevelyn as if he could not see him quite well enough at this distance to be entirely certain he was the same witness to whom he had been listening for the last two days.

Trevelyn looked uneasy. He shifted position in the chair, returning Darnell’s puzzled glance with one of his own.

‘I’m confused,’ said Darnell in a strong, clear voice as he stepped forward.‘You’ve been testifying for the better part of two days—and with some reluctance, if I’m not mistaken.’

Darnell seemed to expect an answer; Trevelyn did not know there was a question.

‘I say with some reluctance, because you only agreed to become a witness for the prosecution after you were given a grant of immunity. That’s true, isn’t it? You were given immunity in exchange for your testimony; that is the deal you made, isn’t it?’

‘I was given immunity.That’s true,’repliedTrevelyn with caution.

Darnell smiled. ‘So that everyone understands, immunity in this instance means that the government—Mr Roberts—has agreed not to prosecute you, and he did this because he wants your help in prosecuting Vincent Marlowe. Does that about sum up the case?’

The suspicion in Trevelyn’s eyes became more pronounced. He knew Darnell was leading up to something.

‘The problem I’m having, Mr Trevelyn—the reason for my confusion—is that I don’t understand why. What possible reason would you have to demand immunity as the price of your testimony if you haven’t committed a crime? Why insist on immunity from prosecution if there is nothing for which you could be punished?’

Trevelyn started to reply, but the first word came out a stutter.

Darnell did not give him time to catch his breath.‘You did not commit a crime; you did nothing wrong. Unless I dozed off at some point during your testimony—testimony which, I must say, certainly answered the purposes of the prosecution—you’ve insisted that you were nothing more than the unwilling beneficiary of Marlowe’s gruesome work.’

Trevelyn began to protest that he had not benefited from anything Marlowe had done.

Darnell stopped him with a cold, hard stare. ‘That’s right, Mr Trevelyn, you can’t even admit that.You did nothing, did you? You committed no crime, you did nothing wrong. Marlowe murdered the boy, Marlowe murdered everyone. Marlowe, Marlowe—never you! Or was it that you thought you needed immunity because, though you disapproved of everything that was done, you did nothing to stop it?’

Darnell raised his head as if to study Trevelyn from a different angle, to see him and what he was from a new and more critical perspective. ‘You did not lift a finger; you did not do a thing. Is that what you feel guilty about? That Marlowe is sitting here, on trial for his life, while you sit there, alive and with nothing more to fear because those things you now claim to find so offensive and immoral were the very things that saved your life?’

‘He killed them! I had nothing to do with that!’

Darnell’s thin grey eyebrows shot straight up. ‘Nothing to do with that?’ He walked quickly to the counsel table. ‘You’re an American citizen, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you haven’t lived in this country for nearly ten years?’

‘I travel around, go different places. I don’t like to get too tied down,’ he replied with a restless gaze.

‘Married?’

Trevelyn’s head snapped up, a look of puzzled suspicion in his eyes. ‘I was.’

‘Was? You’re divorced?’

Trevelyn stared at Darnell a moment longer, then looked away. ‘I’m not married anymore,’ he mumbled.

‘I’m sorry. I could not quite hear you.You’ll have to speak up.’

‘I’m not married anymore.’

‘Then you are divorced?’

‘As good as.’

‘Then you’re not?’

‘I haven’t seen her in years. Last I heard she was living with someone else. Divorced? I don’t know, maybe. I never got papers. But then, I wasn’t here,’ he said, folding his hands over his chest and sinking back in the chair.

Darnell seemed to be enjoying this. ‘You might still be married or you might not. Perhaps you can give a more definitive answer to the question of whether you have children?’

‘I have two.’

‘They both live with their mother, do they not?’

‘Yes. As I said, I move around a lot and—’

‘And it would not make much difference if you didn’t. They live with their mother because the court gave custody to her in that divorce you know nothing about.’

Roberts was on his feet. ‘Your Honour, I fail to see what Mr Trevelyn’s domestic arrangements have to do with…?’

‘Credibility, your Honour,’ Darnell asserted.

Maitland nodded.‘Overruled.’

‘In point of fact, Mr Trevelyn, you know all about the divorce, just as you know that you were ordered to pay child support. Isn’t it true, Mr Trevelyn, that the reason you left the country in the first place—the reason, as you put it, that you “travel around, go different places”—is to avoid that obligation? You’ve never paid your wife anything, have you? Not one penny in all these years to help support your own children. I’m afraid, Mr Trevelyn, that the immunity agreement you have with the prosecution won’t cover that!’

‘I meant to pay, I did,’ insisted Trevelyn as Darnell moved from the counsel table to the far end of the jury box.‘I meant to, I wanted to. But every time I got a little ahead, had enough to send, my luck seemed to go bad.’

‘Luck.Yes, I see. It seems to follow you everywhere, doesn’t it? That was the reason you were on the
Evangeline
in the first place, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what you said? That it was an accident,a mistake?’

‘And look what it cost me!’ Trevelyn cried as he shoved out in front of him the empty knotted pant leg where his foot should have been.

‘And look what it cost some twenty others!’ retorted Darnell, an ominous look in his eyes. ‘You had, if I’m not mistaken, a certain responsibility for what happened to them, didn’t you? No, Mr Trevelyn, don’t protest. Just answer my questions and we’ll let the jury decide whether you acted the way you should have.’

‘I’m sure he would answer your questions,’ interjected Roberts with a droll smile,‘if you were ever to ask one.’

With a tip of his forehead, Darnell took the point. ‘An excellent suggestion. Now, Mr Trevelyn, let us begin with this: you were hired on as a member of the crew, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hired by Vincent Marlowe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Marlowe explained to you the nature of the voyage and what your responsibilities would be?’

‘He did.’

‘He also explained to you, along with the other members of the crew, the responsibilities that each would have in the event of an emergency? Not only explained it, but put you through regular and repeated drills so that there would be no question of where you were to go and what you were to do if something should happen?’

‘We knew the routine; we practised it.’

‘And one of the things you practised as part of the lifeboat drill was to move as quickly as possible to a lifeboat—one of the Zodiacs or one of the inflatable rubber rafts—and make it ready, correct?’

Trevelyn seemed to shrink inside himself. His eyes went blank, his face grew pale. He stared at Darnell and did not answer.

‘And not just to any one of them, but the one to which you were assigned. I don’t mean assigned as a passenger, but assigned as the crew member in charge—because without a member of the crew, someone who knew how to handle a Zodiac or a rubber raft, the passengers would not have a chance. You had such an assignment, did you not, Mr Trevelyn?’

Again there was no answer, just that barren stare.

‘But you did not do what you were supposed to do, what you had been trained to do.You did not go to the lifeboat you were supposed to take charge of. In your panic, in your fear, you forgot everything except your own survival. That’s why you ripped the canvas off the Zodiac that—as you would have remembered if you had not been scared out of your wits—was filled with cargo and could not be used. Isn’t that the truth, Mr Trevelyn? You panicked and, because of your panic, God knows how many people died!’

‘I didn’t, I swear I—’

‘You were one of the survivors, picked up in the lifeboat forty days after the
Evangeline
went down. But that was not the only boat that got away, was it, Mr Trevelyn? There was a second one as well—a rubber raft—wasn’t there?’

Trevelyn’s head jerked back as if he had been struck a blow. His hands curled around the arms of the witness chair, his nails digging into it. His eyes were wild, frantic. ‘It wasn’t panic— I swear it wasn’t. There just wasn’t time!’

‘But there was enough time for the other boat to get away— time that you wasted!’ cried Darnell, thrusting out his chin. ‘Tell us, Mr Trevelyn, if you would: what happened to that raft, the one that could have held at least eight people, the one that was your responsibility? How many of the people in it survived? How many of them were rescued at sea?’

‘None that I know of.’

‘None that you know of. That raft was never seen again, was it?’

As if he had done with the whole thing, finished with the witness, Darnell returned to the counsel table and sat down. He stared at the ceiling, the way he often did when a witness was being examined by the other side.

‘There wasn’t time,’ said Darnell, rolling the phrase off his tongue as if it held a meaning deeper than he had originally thought. ‘There wasn’t time to get to the raft where you were supposed to be in charge. But if there wasn’t time to go directly to that one, how did you have time to get to the Zodiac? Yes, of course, because it must have been closer. But after you discovered that that lifeboat would not work, you still had time to get to a second one, the one in which you were found. How do you explain that?’

Trevelyn denied it.‘I didn’t go to any other boat. There wasn’t time. The
Evangeline
was going down. The storm was awful—the storm from hell. I was swept overboard, and I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t know who it was that pulled me from the sea.’

‘Yes, I forgot. You don’t remember what happened after the
Evangeline
sank.’ Darnell rapped his knuckles on the table and stood up. ‘But others do, Mr Trevelyn,’ he said, his voice a warning. ‘It isn’t likely they’ll ever forget.’

Darnell began to pace back and forth, a few steps one way, a few steps back, moving more rapidly with each step he took. ‘You’re under oath, Mr Trevelyn; this is a court of law. A man stands accused of murder, a man who saved your life. This is your chance, your only chance, to tell the truth.You were in a panic, as afraid as you have ever been in your life. Everyone can understand that. You made a mistake—you went to the wrong boat. You expected to find it ready to lower away; you found it filled with things that had no business being there. The storm was so ferocious—the wind howling all around you, the waves as tall as buildings crashing down over your head—you knew you were going to die. Then you saw it, your only chance, the lifeboat, the one with Marlowe in it—and you jumped!’

‘I was thrown overboard. I don’t know who pulled me out of the water and into the boat.’

Darnell stopped in his tracks and shot him a withering glance. ‘You jumped, which is how you broke your wrist—you landed on your arm.You jumped into a lifeboat that already had too many people, a lifeboat that, without Marlowe’s skillful management, would have gone down the same way the
Evangeline
had.’

‘No, I—’

‘The lifeboat had too many people, and there were others, floundering in the water, crying out for help, grabbing onto it in a last desperate attempt to save themselves. A choice had to be made: either everyone was going to drown, or those trying to get in would have to be stopped and some of those who had gotten in would have to be thrown out. That’s what you did, Mr Trevelyn! How could you forget it? How could anyone forget that, hitting drowning men and women with an oar to keep them away, pushing others out? You did that, Mr Trevelyn! Why won’t you admit it?’

‘We all would have drowned!’cried Trevelyn in mortal anguish. ‘We had no other choice! Don’t you know they would have done the same to us? There were hands and arms everywhere, everyone fighting to get in, trying to force the others out. And the storm raging all around like nothing you’ve ever seen, the boat thrown so high at times you thought for sure we would all be tumbled out, like water tossed out of a glass. There was no telling who was in, who was out, everyone hanging on to anything he could grab. The ones that started, the ones who got there first—don’t think they were the ones who were there at the end, when that hellish storm was finally finished with us and those of us still breathing could finally collapse!’

‘It was every man for himself, then. Is that what you are saying—now that you can remember?’

Trevelyn sat back with a shudder.‘You blame me for trying to forget that awful night?’