The Evangeline (29 page)

‘Tell us, if you would, Ms Grimes,’ said Roberts as he began his cross-examination, ‘did Mr Whitfield ever say, even in anger, that he hoped that the
Evangeline
would sink?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Of course not? Because whatever difficulties in which he may have found himself, whatever financial obligations he may have had, he would never have wanted anyone on the
Evangeline
to be harmed—correct?’

Cynthia Grimes was no ordinary witness, and no ordinary woman. She had a rather different sense of human motivation than she had had before. The
Evangeline
had made her quicker to see beyond the surface into the darkened heart of things.

‘Are you asking what he might have wanted, or what he might have done about it? No, I don’t think he would have deliberately done anything to cause us harm. But do I think he would have minded? Why don’t you ask him what he thought, when he first heard that the
Evangeline
might be missing?’

‘You agree that he would not have done anything to harm those aboard the
Evangeline
. Good. As far as you know, then, the decision he made with respect to the time-consuming and, according to the builder, unnecessary check of the welding seams in the hull was made in perfect good faith? He never said to you, “I’m not going to check them because if it sinks I can collect the insurance money,” did he?’

She seemed almost to enjoy it, this effort to protect the innocence and good name of the man who had betrayed her. It provided certain possibilities for revenge. ‘Benjamin Whitfield did not get where he is by saying such stupid things. But no, in answer to your question, he never said that,’ she said with a bitter smile. ‘Of course, neither did he bother to tell me—or any of the others he waved goodbye to—that there had even been a question about whether the
Evangeline
might break apart in a storm! Nor has he offered to use any of that insurance money—the millions that he collected because the
Evangeline
sank—to compensate any of us who suffered because of his selfish negligence!’ she cried.

The courtroom erupted into a bedlam of noise. Maitland slammed his gavel hard against the wooden bench until the crowd fell silent.

‘I know this is difficult, Ms Grimes,’ said Maitland, bending towards her, ‘but you must restrict your answer to the specific question you are asked. If there is anything you later wish to add, I’m sure that Mr Darnell will give you the opportunity to do it on redirect.’

Roberts had made a mistake and he knew it. He moved to a different line of questioning, one that would not involve her feelings towards Benjamin Whitfield.‘There are just a few questions I want to ask you about what happened after the
Evangeline
sank.You told Mr Darnell that you asked Mr Marlowe to spare you because you were carrying a child. I understand that you now believe that he did that, that he made sure you were not chosen to be one of those who had to die; but he told you at the time that he could not do it because it would not be fair. Did I understand you correctly?’

‘He said he could not do it, that except for himself and Mr Offenbach, everyone had to be in it. But it was not true, of course, because he made sure the boy was chosen first and made sure I was not chosen at all. The important thing was that everyone believe that we were being treated the same, that we all had the same chance.’

‘Even though, as we now know, you did not?’

‘We had to believe that, believe that we were all doing what we had to so that there was at least the chance that some of us would survive.’

‘Because it was important, wasn’t it—Marlowe has said it was important—that everyone have the sense that there was something to be accomplished by their death; that death would have a meaning if it meant that others could live? Is that how you understood it?’ asked Roberts, an expression of the utmost certainty on his face.

‘Yes, that is exactly what I thought, what we all thought.’

‘And those who were chosen, whether chosen by chance or, like the boy, chosen on purpose—all of them met their deaths bravely, without resistance?’

‘Yes, all of them.’

‘My question, then, is why, if everyone was willing to sacrifice themselves for the others, no one thought to ask for volunteers? Instead of this lottery, instead of supposedly leaving it all to chance, why didn’t Marlowe call for volunteers? Why didn’t he just ask if someone wanted to die so that the others could live?’

She had no answer, but an answer was not what he wanted. He had another question that would make his point even more dramatic.

‘Marlowe was in charge, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because Marlowe was the captain of the
Evangeline
, and the passengers were under his care?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why, if it was his duty to take care of all the rest, did not Marlowe volunteer—can you tell us that? Why did not Marlowe volunteer to be the first to die?’

Cynthia Grimes looked at Roberts with open contempt.‘He did! You heard him! You heard what he said—that he could not go through with it, that he could not kill the boy, that he would have taken his place!’

‘Yes, but he did not do that, did he?’ said Roberts with a scornful look of his own.‘And whatever he may have said before he killed the boy, I don’t recall that he volunteered to take the place of any of the others he killed—do you?’

Darnell resisted the temptation to stop Roberts with a well-timed objection. He let him go on, working himself to a fever pitch, while he, Darnell, stared idly at the ceiling, like someone who has heard it all before and is not in the least impressed. He kept staring at the ceiling, as if he had fallen asleep with his eyes wide open, when Roberts finally finished. He was still staring at it when Homer Maitland peered down from the bench and asked if he had anything he wished to ask on redirect. Slowly, Darnell looked around, as if he had thought that Roberts was still at work, shouting invective at a young, pregnant witness. He stood up, smiled across at Cynthia Grimes and apologised, not for himself, but for what his ‘good friend, Mr Roberts, had been forced to do’.

‘It is one of the necessities of what we sometimes do as lawyers: try to beat an answer out of a witness who cannot possibly know what was going through another person’s mind. Mr Roberts wants to know why Mr Marlowe did not ask for volunteers. Isn’t it true, Ms Grimes, that that is exactly what Mr Marlowe did?’

She wanted to be helpful, but the question did not seem to let her. ‘I’m not sure I…?’

‘What I mean is that, at the very beginning, when there were the first discussions of what you might have to do, everyone agreed to be bound by whatever the majority decided. This is another way of saying, if I’m not mistaken, that every one of you entered into that agreement voluntarily. Isn’t that true, Ms Grimes? Didn’t you, along with the others, agree that this had to be done, that someone had to sacrifice his or her life to save the lives of the others and, in that sense, volunteer as one of those who might be chosen? The point I am trying to make is quite simple,’ said Darnell with a modest, disarming smile. ‘No one was forced to die; everyone died of their own free will; everyone who met their death at Marlowe’s trembling and unwilling hand was in fact a volunteer. Is that the way you saw it?’

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘No further questions, your Honour.’

Maitland glanced at the clock, and then at Darnell.‘You have another witness, if I’m not mistaken.’ He turned to the jury.‘We’ll take our noon recess a little early. Instead of starting again at two o’clock, we’ll start at one-thirty.’

There was too much to do to bother with lunch. Darnell shut himself inside a small windowless room where lawyers could confer privately with their clients. For the next hour and a half he pored over the transcript of Benjamin Whitfield’s prior testimony and the copious and meticulous notes he had taken of the testimony of certain other witnesses as well. He did not need to read more than the first few words of a paragraph, or sometimes of a whole page, to refresh his memory of what had been said. The pages turned one after the other under an intense concentration whose only physical manifestation was an almost catatonic stare. Someone could have fired a gun just outside the door and he would not have heard it. The clock inside his head, the clock that never worked when he had to be anywhere but court, told him when it was time to stop. At twenty-five minutes after the hour, Darnell shut his briefcase and headed back down the hall. The pills that Summer Blaine had given him that morning, the pills that he had promised to take at lunch, lay forgotten in his pocket.

It did not matter; he had not felt this well in ages. There was a bounce to his step when he entered the courtroom, the place he always felt at home. He sat down next to Marlowe, but did not speak to him. He smiled to himself with anticipation.With one final witness, he would bring the trial full circle and show that the only crimes that counted had been committed not on the high seas, after the
Evangeline
had sunk, but before the
Evangeline
had ever left port.

Homer Maitland burst through the door at the side. The courtroom crowd rose as one. Maitland nodded to the jury and, with a motion of his hand, told the crowd to sit. ‘Mr Darnell,’ he said in a firm, rough-edged voice, ‘are you ready with your next witness?’

Darnell was on his feet. ‘Your Honour, the defence calls Benjamin Whitfield.’

Maitland reminded Whitfield that because he had not been formally excused, he was still under oath.‘Even though, this time, you’re here as a witness not for the prosecution, but for the defence.’

Benjamin Whitfield looked more worried, and more cautious, than he had before. He had read the newspaper accounts of what other witnesses had said at the trial. He had been besieged with requests for interviews after what Marlowe had said. He had read about what the naval architect had said about the hull. Someone had no doubt told him what Cynthia Grimes had said that morning. He knew that, whatever other reason Darnell might have had to put him under subpoena, he was going to be asked to explain why, as a witness for the prosecution, he had lied.

Darnell was surprisingly pleasant. ‘It’s good to see you again, Mr Whitfield,’ he said as he moved across the front of the courtroom to the table where the clerk kept the various exhibits that had been marked and introduced into evidence.‘May I have the photographs, please, the ones introduced by the prosecution when Mr Whitfield testified before?’

Darnell handed Whitfield the pictures that he had earlier identified as being of the
Evangeline
before she started her last, ill-fated voyage. ‘You remember these photographs, don’t you? Two taken when she was christened, three of them while she was on her sea trials, and the last—that one,’ he said, pointing to the one Whitfield had just turned over, ‘—taken the day she left, the day she sailed out of Nice for that trip around Africa she never completed.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Whitfield warily, holding the photographs in his hand.

‘I was struck at the time—and I’m sure the jury was struck as well—by how beautiful she was.’

Whitfield nodded, and waited.

‘But despite that old saying about a picture being worth a thousand words, in this case the pictures perhaps hid more than they told—wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I don’t think I quite understand what you mean.’

‘Oh, I think you do, Mr Whitfield,’ replied Darnell with a sidelong glance at the jurors.

They were watching the witness with new eyes, seeing him now through the lens of what they had been told since his first appearance, no longer willing to accept what he said at face value. He was aware of their suspicion, bothered by it to the point that he would not look back at them.

Darnell stood at the far end of the jury box, so that Whitfield would have to look right past them.‘I think you do, Mr Whitfield. But there is also something else about those pictures that may not be immediately apparent. It certainly was not apparent to me when I first saw them. The size, Mr Whitfield, the size. Here, look at them, each one of them. The
Evangeline
is all alone; there are no other boats, no other “sailing yachts” around her. It was not until Mr Mulholland, the architect you commissioned to design and build her, testified that any of us first understood how large she really was—almost two hundred feet in length! No wonder you thought she could go anywhere in the world; no wonder you told him, the man who designed and built her, that no one who sailed her would ever have to worry about safety.’

Darnell paused, as if he wanted to make sure he had not been misunderstood. ‘That is what you told him, isn’t it? That with all the technology she had on board, safety—well, I don’t want to be imprecise. I think your exact words, at least as Mr Mulholland remembered them, were: “the last thing anyone had to worry about was safety”.’ Darnell lifted his eyebrows with an air of expectancy. ‘Isn’t that what you said?’

‘Perhaps I said something like that; I’m not sure.’ Whitfield bent forward, rubbing his hands together. ‘She should have been safe; she would have been safe if—’

‘If some of the equipment had not failed; if she had not encountered a storm of such unexpected ferocity; if a lot of different things had not happened. We have heard all about that, Mr Whitfield. But all of it, I must tell you, comes down to this: she would have been safe if you had not lied!’

‘I didn’t lie! Not about anything that mattered!’

‘Not about anything that mattered? You lied to Marlowe: you told him the
Evangeline
had gone through her sea trials without a problem!’

‘I didn’t lie to him on purpose. Don’t you understand? Everything was falling apart. Everyone wanted something; there were questions about everything.When Marlowe asked about the sea trials—I had so many things going on, I don’t even remember that he did—I must have told him whatever I thought he wanted to hear. The
Evangeline
had just sailed across the Atlantic. She was fine. A little crack needed fixing, that was all. She was what I said she was before, what Mulholland said as well—the finest vessel of her kind ever built!’