The Evangeline (27 page)

‘I never get much sleep during a trial. Even when I do, I dream about it. Doesn’t matter, really. I’m not that tired; and besides, it’s almost over. One more witness; maybe two, depending on what I learn tonight.’

Summer regretted her overcautious tone. She was there because she wanted them to have as much time together as they could, not because she was his doctor. She wanted him to enjoy her company, not worry about whether she approved of what he did. Knowing full well that it would keep her up half the night, she ordered coffee as well.

‘What you learn tonight? She’s here, then? Cynthia Grimes, the other woman who survived, the one who had been having the affair with Benjamin Whitfield?’

‘It was all I could do to convince her to come. It was hard enough to find her. She left the country just days after she walked out of the hospital. She went back to Nice, where this whole dreadful business started. At first she would not even talk to me on the telephone; then, when she did, she made it plain that she would not come back, ever. I couldn’t force her. She’s out of the jurisdiction; I could not put her under subpoena. The only thing I could think to do was call her every few days and tell her what was going on at the trial, tell her what each of the witnesses had said.’

Summer looked surprised. ‘Did she really want to hear about that? I would have thought—after everything she had been through —that the last thing she would want is to have to remember any part of it.’

‘That was her first reaction. She started to waver when I told her what Samantha Wilcox had said—that she believes there is a reason for everything that happens, and that she has no right to feel anything but gratitude for being saved. But it was only when I told her what Marlowe had said that she decided to come back.’

‘Marlowe…?’

‘What he had done to make sure the boy died first. It shocked her—that’s the only way I can describe it. There was a long silence—I thought the line had gone dead, that for some reason she had hung up—and then I heard her start to cry. I don’t know why. She would not tell me. I assume it’s because, like Marlowe, she knows now that the boy could have lived. In any event, that changed everything. She flew in last night and is staying at a hotel on Sutter Street, registered under a different name. No one knows she’s here.’

‘Not even the prosecution?’

‘She made me promise I would not tell anyone. When she walks into court tomorrow morning, everyone is going to be surprised. And, depending on what she says, I may be more surprised than anyone.’

‘You don’t have any idea?’

‘None. I’ve done most of the talking in our conversations, trying to draw her interest, trying to get her to trust me. She knows something; I can feel it. And it’s not just what happened between her and Whitfield. They were having an affair; she was upset, angry, when he left her to take the trip without him. But it’s more than that. It was the way she reacted, the way she listened, the way she dissolved into tears. Something happened, something about what Marlowe did, something that no one else knows. I’m going to put her on the stand and I don’t know whether her testimony is going to help Marlowe or bury him.’

Summer Blaine did not believe it. She had heard too much about Marlowe to credit the possibility that a woman would come all this way, give up the anonymity she obviously prized to cause him harm.

‘It’s the boy,’ she said with earnest conviction.‘That’s why she’s willing to put herself through this; willing to let everyone gawk at her in court; willing to have her picture taken when she walks out of there knowing it will be flashed on television screens and shown in newspapers around the world. It’s the fact of what he did—what he thought he had to do—to save a child. Maybe it’s just what she saw on Marlowe’s face, that awful anguish that some of the others have talked about. Maybe she knows something more about it, maybe it was something Marlowe said—but it has to be that, or something like it, something she knows will explain what Marlowe did, make it more … I was going to say necessary, because I’ve heard you speak of necessity so often; but no, not necessary—more like forgivable.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Darnell, glancing at his watch. ‘I should know in another hour.’

‘You said two witnesses,’ Summer reminded him. ‘Depending on what you learn tonight.’

Darnell slowly sipped his coffee. He was thinking about the way he had to fit all the pieces together. Everything had to unfold with the rigorous logic of a fate foretold, all the gruesome violence of desperate people living off each other’s blood and flesh nothing short of unavoidable once the
Evangeline
went down. But that had to be the beginning, and not the end, of the search for the first link in the chain, the moving cause of what they had been forced to do. He had to show the jury, he had to make them believe, that the
Evangeline
was not sunk by a storm or by any other act of God; that what happened was the consequence of human pride and negligence—if not, indeed, something worse. His best chance of saving Marlowe was to show the jury that they had someone else to blame. Darnell had almost convinced himself.

‘I’ve sometimes wondered,’ he said, as his eyes came back to Summer, ‘whether Whitfield did not do it on purpose. He had a motive, and maybe more than one.’

She searched his eyes to see if he was serious. ‘Do you mean he sent the
Evangeline
out to sea, knowing that if he did not check those seams she might sink? But why would anyone do that, put all those lives at risk?’

‘Money. That’s why—the oldest motive of them all.’

‘But Whitfield is a rich man.’

‘Whitfield is overextended. The
Evangeline
was insured for nearly thirty million.’ With a pensive expression, Darnell tapped his middle finger three times on the tablecloth, paused, then tapped it three times more. ‘Of course, if that had been his intention, there was almost no chance it would work. The
Evangeline
sailed all the way across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean in that first shakedown cruise and had not sunk, and the crack below the waterline had been repaired.What were the chances she would ever run into a storm like that? My point isn’t that he planned it, that he did something to make certain that the
Evangeline
would be lost at sea. It was not so much a conscious, as a fugitive, thought; that evil wish we so often disguise from ourselves; that fleeting, immediately denied, calculation of how we might benefit if something bad happened to someone else. They tell him that the hull is fine, that there isn’t any danger, but he knows there is only one way to be sure. That will cost more money, though, take more time; and then what if it needs more repairs? Why does he need to bother with this now? There isn’t any real danger of something happening to the
Evangeline
. If she starts to leak again, they can head back to port and fix her the way they did the last time. A danger that she might sink? He tells himself with a kind of secret pleasure that he could only hope to be so lucky. It is a risk he does not mind taking.What does he have to lose?’

‘The lives of a lot of other people,’ replied Summer, shocked at the possibility of a calculation that cunning.

‘With all that electronic equipment? With all that modern communications technology? I’m not saying that he thought it all the way through, that he planned what happened. He never grasped the danger; he never believed anything like that
could
happen—not in this day and age. Even now—you could see it when he testified in court—he can’t quite believe it really did happen; even though, as I say, there was a part of him that almost hoped it would. There is not always such a clear distinction between the intentions of good and evil people. The lines grow blurred when emotions like greed and love enter into it.’

‘Love? Do you mean the affair with your witness, Cynthia Grimes?’

‘We know they had had some kind of falling out. We know she was angry. When he told Marlowe that the
Evangeline
had passed her sea trials with flying colours, when he thought about the money and how much he needed it, when he had all those thoughts and feelings jumbling around in his head —what do you think he must have thought about her? Do you think he might have thought, if only for a brief, fleeting moment, how good it would be if she were not in his life anymore, ridding him of another complication he regretted and did not need?’

Summer finally understood.‘Whitfield is your second witness? He was a witness for the prosecution, and now you’re going to call him as a witness for the defence? And this is what you’re going to do with him—ask him questions about his need for money and the insurance, his involvement with Cynthia Grimes and why he wanted out of it? You want everyone to think that he had something to do with what happened to the
Evangeline
? That he wanted her to sink? Is that right? Is it fair?’

Darnell sat straight up and swung his legs away from the table. He held his arms folded across his chest and lowered his eyes, brooding on her final question and all its implications.‘Is it fair? All I know is that it is necessary. Is it fair? If Whitfield had done what he should have, the
Evangeline
might have stayed afloat and none of those lives would have been lost. Is it fair? If he had not lied to Marlowe, if he had told him the truth, Marlowe would not have taken her beyond the Straits of Gibraltar and neither he nor anyone else would have been condemned to live their lives ashamed of what the world thinks of them and of what they think of themselves. Is it fair? He did not do what he should have, then lied about what he did, and because of that Hugo Offenbach will never play again. What isn’t fair is that the famous and respected Benjamin Whitfield never had to draw lots with the others!’

An apologetic smile dashed across his mouth. He did not need to give instruction on life’s unfairness to Summer Blaine. She could have taught that lesson a dozen times better than he ever could.

‘We need to go,’ he said, checking his watch.‘I didn’t realise it was so late.’

He dropped Summer at the apartment and drove downtown to the hotel on Sutter Street where Cynthia Grimes waited with a story that would change everything he thought of Vincent Marlowe and what Marlowe had done. He spent hours talking to her, and when he finally got home, Summer was asleep in a chair, the book she had been reading lying open in her lap. He had not taken two steps inside the door before she woke up.

‘What happened?’ she asked, alarmed at the pallor of his cheek and the strange, almost haunted, look in his eyes. She jumped out of the chair and took him by the arm. ‘What happened?’ she repeated as she led him to the sofa. ‘Is it your heart? Don’t lie to me, Bill. Are you having chest pains?’

He shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t that. It’s what I’ve just been told.You were right about Cynthia Grimes. The reason she agreed to come, the reason she agreed to testify, is because of what Marlowe said about the boy.’

‘What about the boy? What has you so upset?’

Darnell slowly shook his head. ‘It’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

D
ARNELL SAT AT HIS DESK IN THE STUDY, STARING out the window at the fog twisting through the city lights. There were important decisions to be made, and he did not know how to make them. Should he call Cynthia Grimes as a witness or would her testimony be too disturbing for the jury? But the truth, however harsh and painful, was the promise he had made at the beginning. Could he turn his back on it now? When the pink-fingered dawn finally stretched across the sky, Darnell realised that there was no choice to be made. This was not a trial in which the verdict was the only thing that mattered; this was a trial that was, or would become, a catharsis, a way to reconcile what we wanted to believe about ourselves and what we feared we could still too easily become.

He had to call Cynthia Grimes, but he did not have to call her first. He could call Benjamin Whitfield back to the stand.Whitfield had lied, and Darnell could prove it. Call Whitfield, then call her; concentrate the jury’s attention so much on the importance of what had happened before the
Evangeline
set sail that perhaps what Cynthia Grimes had to say about what had happened after the
Evangeline
sank might not be quite so shocking. In the final grey light of morning that ‘perhaps’ began to take on a hollow, artificial ring, the forced attempt to imagine what could never happen.

‘You didn’t sleep at all, did you?’ asked Summer Blaine as she came up behind him and placed her hands softly on his shoulders. ‘How are you going to get through the day? There is a limit to how long even you can keep running on adrenalin.’

‘I’m indestructible. I thought you knew that.’

While he showered and dressed, she made them a small breakfast of bacon and eggs. After he was finished, she handed him two pills. ‘Take these: one now, one at lunch. Tonight—whatever happens at trial, whatever you think you have to do for tomorrow —you are going straight to bed. And if you have any trouble sleeping, you’re going to take a sleeping pill.You can’t go on like this.Your heart won’t take it.You’re not young anymore, William Darnell, and you’d better remember it.You can live ten or fifteen years longer or you can die tomorrow.You promised me before this trial started that you wouldn’t do that; you promised that you would take care of yourself.’

‘Nothing is going to happen to me. It is an old rule of the Common Law: a lawyer has to stay alive until the trial is finished. Death is considered malpractice!’ he insisted, his eyes shining at her failed attempt to keep from smiling.

She had put him in the proper mood, though that had not been her main intention. Tomorrow would take care of itself; he could not worry about the consequences of what he did, or did not do, this morning. This was a trial—unusual, even unique, but still a trial. There were always witnesses who created situations you had not quite anticipated; that was what kept things interesting, what made him feel so alive. What he had told Summer Blaine was very nearly the truth: he was indestructible, at least while he was still in court. And that, after all, was what really mattered: that he could still work, still function, still do what he did as well as, or better than, anyone else.