The Evangeline (16 page)

Roberts seized on this. ‘Would not hear of it for Trevelyn— only for himself!’

‘That isn’t quite true in any sense, Mr Roberts, and in one sense it isn’t true at all. When the boy was chosen, Mr Marlowe wanted to take his place. No, it’s true—I swear it! You didn’t see the awful look on his face when it happened. I did, and I can assure you, Mr Roberts, that I’ll never forget it. He would have taken the boy’s place, all right—there isn’t the slightest doubt— and done it gladly.Why he didn’t, I’m not quite sure I understand. The boy wouldn’t let him, but that wouldn’t have been enough to stop him. I think perhaps, despite all the encouragement he kept giving us, that he had given up, that he didn’t believe that there was any chance of rescue, or that any of us would survive. Perhaps he decided finally that he should spare the boy more suffering. I don’t know.What I do know is that Mr Marlowe was not afraid of death.’

‘Whatever Vincent Marlowe did or did not think,’ said Roberts, eager to move on,‘this drawing you described—was this the method used each time someone new was selected?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘And you drew along with the others?’

‘Yes, but each time I lost.’

‘Lost? Oh, yes, you wanted to die,’ said Roberts in a voice that seemed troubled and remote.

‘I wasn’t brave like Mr Marlowe and some of the others,’ she said with a modest, faraway glance. ‘All I could do was pray for deliverance.’

Roberts stood at the end of the jury box. The fingers of his right hand rested lightly on the railing. He looked at Samantha Wilcox as if he owed her an apology.

‘I have to ask you something that I know will be difficult. The last time this was done, the last time another person was chosen— how long was that before the
White Rose
came? How long before you were rescued?’

There was no response. The silence became profound. With each passing moment she seemed to slip further away, vanishing inside herself to a place where no one could follow.

‘Mrs Wilcox?’ said Roberts gently.

‘One day,’ she said finally. ‘We drew lots the day before.’

‘And would that person—the one chosen—have lived another day and been rescued with the others?’

‘Yes, I imagine he would have been.’

Roberts stared at the floor, nodding solemnly. ‘Nothing further, your Honour,’ he said, and then walked slowly to his chair at the counsel table.

Homer Maitland peered down from the bench. ‘Mr Darnell, do you wish to inquire of the witness?’

With his legs stretched straight out in front of him and his chin sunk on his chest, Darnell appeared to be making up his mind.‘Mrs Wilcox,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on a point somewhere on the floor between them.‘At the risk of labouring the obvious, you had no reason to believe on the day before your rescue that the
White
Rose
or any other ship would suddenly appear the next day—or, for that matter, any day—did you?’

‘No, of course not.’

Darnell’s gaze slid across the floor. ‘So the fact that you were rescued a day later changes nothing about what would have appeared to a reasonable person in those same dreadful circumstances to be what necessity required, does it? It was no different— except for what, after the fact, appears to add just one more lamentable dimension to what everyone admits is the tragedy of the
Evangeline
—than what was done, what had to be done, each time before?’ he asked as his eyes finally met hers.

As soon as she agreed, Darnell got to his feet. ‘Each time this was done, each time another person was chosen by lot, you had to have hoped—you all had to have hoped—that it would be the last time; that before you were once again reduced to starvation, rescue would come?’

‘Yes, of course.We all prayed for that.’

Darnell nodded his belief that she was right, that everyone had done what she said, as he moved around the counsel table and came closer.‘Mr Roberts did not ask you, so I will,’ he said as he stopped in front of her. ‘Captain Balfour—I’m sure you remember him— testified that you said two angels had come down from heaven and that you had been rescued by them. Is that true, Mrs Wilcox? Is that what happened?’

There was not the slightest scepticism in his voice, certainly none of the scorn of the unbeliever. Darnell was simply providing her the opportunity to give her own account of what she had seen. Samantha Wilcox was more than willing to offer testimony to her faith.

‘I know that many of you don’t believe—that you think that it was just an accident that we were rescued, that the
White Rose
just came along by chance. But just what chance is there that in all those thousands of miles, in all that trackless sea, that ship—any ship— would find our small boat, a speck on the horizon, nothing more? I believed; I’m alive. There is a reason—there has to be. There is a meaning in all of this.Yes, I saw two angels, radiant in the sun. Did I see them the way I see you, a physical presence in front of my eyes, or did I see them only in my heart? Does it matter? Are you going to tell me that only one sense is real?

‘There is a meaning in all of this, if you’ll only grasp it.We are more than just animals; we’re not just part of dumb creation. We died for each other out there.We drew lots—we let God decide. But we did it willingly—or they did, the ones who were chosen to die for the others. Doesn’t that tell you that there must be something god-like in each one of us, each one of you?’

Her face glowed with an inner light that conjured up visions of things cloistered and medieval. Only someone as lost and bitter as Trevelyn would have doubted that she had meant it when she said she had prayed each time that the next one chosen would be her.

Darnell held her gaze in his own, taking comfort from it and trying to give some comfort back. ‘Would you tell us please, Mrs Wilcox, something about the boy? Do you remember him from before the storm—what he was like while he was working on the
Evangeline
?’

‘Yes, I remember him. He was fine, intelligent—quick as a whip. He seemed to idolise Mr Marlowe. He followed him everywhere, just waiting for whatever Mr Marlowe asked him to do next. That isn’t so surprising; a man who knows what he is doing, a man everyone admires. That is who boys are drawn to— men they want to be like. Poor Mr Marlowe! When the boy was chosen … I’ve never seen a look like that.’

‘Could you explain to us why, if he was willing to allow the boy to die—a boy for whose life he would have given his own— he would not let Hugo Offenbach be included among those whose names were drawn?’

She looked at him as if she was not sure whether he was serious.‘It was not just Mr Marlowe. Mr Offenbach kept us alive.’ She quickly corrected herself. ‘No, Hugo Offenbach gave us a reason to live.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand. Mr Offenbach—in his condition—what could he do?’

She gave him another look of incredulity.‘What could he do? The greatest violinist in the world? He played, Mr Darnell—he played! Every day, for hours, whenever there was not a storm. That’s when I lost whatever doubts I may have had that we were all in the hands of God: when I heard that music. It was like angels singing.’

‘He had his violin?’ asked Darnell, astonished. ‘But it was not with him when he was rescued; it was not found in the boat.’

Darnell shot a glance at Marlowe, hoping to find the answer in his eyes. Marlowe stared straight ahead, his face as enigmatic as a sphinx.

Chapter Fifteen

D
ESPITE HER OWN OBVIOUS SYMPATHIES, THE testimony of Samantha Wilcox had been devastating to the defence, and no one knew it better than Darnell. This was a case that hung on perceptions as much, or more, than it did on facts. The defence of necessity was the only defence Vincent Marlowe had, and the jury had now been told that the last survivor killed would have been alive with the rest of them had his death been postponed by even one day. The point that Darnell was quick to make, the question he had immediately put to the witness—that no one could have known when, or even whether, a ship would arrive—might, as he later came to understand, have actually worked to Marlowe’s disadvantage. It seemed to raise in a new and doubtful way just how narrow were the range of circumstances that could ever be thought to justify the taking of one life to save the lives of others. Forget what Marlowe knew, or thought he knew; forget how little life the others still had in them—they surely could have held out one more day. But if that were true, if they could have gone one day longer, there was no necessity for what Marlowe did, and what he did was murder.

The only hope Darnell had was to make the jury see things through Marlowe’s eyes, feel what Marlowe had felt, try to face the same intolerable and inescapable decision to do what had to be done to save what lives he could. Each time he cross-examined a witness for the prosecution, whatever else he tried to do, he tried to do that: give the jury another glimpse into that primitive state of nature in which Marlowe had been forced to live and act. The day after Samantha Wilcox testified, Darnell was back in court, getting ready to do it all over again with what might be the last witness the prosecution would call.

James DeSantos would not have been called at all if he had had anything to do with it. From the moment he took the oath, glaring at the clerk, he did everything he could to give vent to his displeasure. Roberts tried to begin with a question that would put him at his ease. It did not work.

Asked to describe to the jury why he and his wife had decided to sail on the
Evangeline
, DeSantos exploded. ‘I told her it was a stupid thing to do! I told her that it was crazy to spend that much time away!’ His dark, handsome eyes burned with more than anger; unaccountably, in light of what had happened, it was something close to hatred. ‘I don’t know why I bothered—you could never tell her anything! She did what she wanted, no matter who it hurt. This time, it hurt her.’

His eyes had wandered all around the hushed, crowded room. Now he looked at Roberts with a hostile, penetrating stare.‘What do you want from me? Why did you bring me here? Haven’t I been through enough?’

‘You were brought here to answer questions, Mr DeSantos,’ said Roberts with a steely glance. ‘You were brought here to tell the truth about what you know.’

‘What I know is that my life is over—ruined, because all she ever thought about was herself. She had a contractual obligation, a picture that was to start shooting in a couple of weeks. She didn’t care if they had to wait, if hundreds of people had to sit on their hands, if the studio lost millions of dollars. She just wanted to have a good time! Sail around Africa—how romantic!’ he exclaimed, his eyes wild with rage. ‘Sail around Africa and look what happened! Look what happened to me! Look what I was forced to do! And if that wasn’t bad enough, look what’s happened since.’

‘What’s happened since?’ asked Roberts, stunned by the violence of the outburst.

DeSantos ignored him. For the first time, he turned to the jury, a ghastly smile on his face. ‘What do you think of me now, after what you’ve heard? What is the first thing that comes into your mind? The movie-star idol, the box-office sensation? Or the pathetic survivor, the ghoul who lived off dead people, including his own wife?’

His eyes, brutal and triumphant, darted back to Roberts. ‘That’s what has happened since. I’ve become a pariah, an outcast. No one will have anything to do with me; no one returns my calls. The pictures I was scheduled to make—cancelled; the offers that used to come in by the dozen every week—withdrawn.’

Roberts would have none of it. As forcefully as he could, he reminded DeSantos once again where he was and what was at issue. ‘This is a murder trial, Mr DeSantos. A man is on trial for his life.Your wife was killed. We’re not much interested in what may or may not have happened to your career!’

DeSantos jumped forward to the front edge of the witness chair. A caustic grin shot across his mouth. ‘My wife? Helena Green? Yes, I remember—we were married once. I seem to remember something about the ceremony, though not much about her being a wife after that. Married? Let me think.Yes! I guess we were. Two years, in which we may have spent all of two months together. Married? Not even enough to warrant a divorce. So why did we go on that ill-fated voyage, isn’t that what you asked? The question is misleading, Mr …? Yes, Roberts. Misleading, because it suggests that it was something we decided on together.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ said Roberts, taking advantage of a pause to get things back on track.‘You said in so many words that it was her idea. Now, let me ask…’

‘Her idea that
she
go. It was not her idea that I come along. I knew you didn’t understand. She was going, and nothing was going to stop her, but she had a thousand different reasons why I shouldn’t come along. The real reason, of course, was that she wanted to be with someone else. That’s right: my wife, Helena Green, wanted to sail around Africa sleeping with someone else. And no, he didn’t survive either.’

It seemed to serve as a kind of catharsis, that public acknowledgment of his wife’s infidelity, that harsh indictment of her betrayal. They were both dead, his wife and her lover, but he was still alive. For the moment that seemed sufficient satisfaction. He looked at Roberts with an air of weary resignation, as if he had said everything he cared to say on the subject.

‘There is really only one point we wish to understand, Mr DeSantos. It has to do with your wife and the way she died.Was she or was she not killed by the defendant, Vincent Marlowe?’

DeSantos looked at Roberts and then, as if he had just become aware of his presence, looked at Marlowe. His whole demeanour changed. His eyes became serious, thoughtful and introspective. The last trace of anger and defiance left his lips. His voice was quiet and subdued. ‘I don’t know how she died.’

Roberts went rigid. Standing next to the end of the counsel table, he pressed his fingers hard against it to keep his hand from shaking. ‘You’re under oath, Mr DeSantos,’ he warned. ‘I will ask you again: did Vincent Marlowe kill your wife? Did he kill Helena Green?’

DeSantos did not blink.‘And I’ll tell you again: I don’t know.’