“The witness is so instructed.” Judge Langley looked toward Scott Velie. “Your next witness?”
Janice shut her eyes and tensed her body for the expected blow, but it failed to materialize. There was a slight delay as Scott Velie selected this moment to introduce Ivy’s birth certificate into the record. Bill edged his way down the row to his seat as the attenuated ritual of entering the birth certificate in evidence as People’s Exhibit Number One was ceremoniously performed.
Looking grim and baleful, Janice leaned over to Bill. “I’m not ready for this,” she said in a high, choked whisper.
“It’ll be all right,” Bill whispered back, his hand gripping her knee, which he found was trembling.
“What happened to Russ and Harold Yates? Why didn’t he put them on?”
“He’s saving them as rebuttal witnesses after the defense has put on its case.”
“I’m not ready for this,” Janice reiterated. Her face was florid, unhealthily so.
“Proceed with your next witness,” Judge Langley directed.
“My next witness,” Velie announced, “is Mrs. William Templeton.”
Janice pushed herself up from the seat and immediately began to feel worse. Her face, flushed and red a moment before, became pale as ashes, and she was sure she would collapse before reaching the witness stand.
An uncommon quiet settled over the courtroom as Janice awkwardly sidestepped her way to the aisle and, the blood surging and pounding in her head, mechanically made her way toward the gate in the railing, each step of her wavering progress seemingly energized by an inner force beyond her command or comprehension. It struck her that under just such a dissociated, yet irresistible compulsion must the French nobility have climbed the ladder to conclude their tête-à-tête with Madame La Guillotine.
At the witness stand Janice held up her right hand, took the oath, then sat, all at the bailiff’s direction.
Scott Velie approached her with a mien of gentle warmth and compassion.
“Would you state your full name, please?”
“Janice Gilbert Templeton.”
“You are the wife of William Templeton?”
“Yes.”
“And the mother of Ivy Templeton?”
“Yes.”
“She is your natural child?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Templeton, describe the events that occurred between the date you first saw the defendant and the date he removed your daughter from your apartment and carried her to his apartment.”
Janice swallowed, cleared her throat, and sought her voice. That she found it, and found it full-bodied, strong, and authoritative, was a further enigma in an afternoon of enigmas. The sound of her own voice was immediately reassuring to her, and soon she heard herself talking more rapidly.
It was with the confidence, assurance, and the practiced hand of a master that Scott Velie elicited the story he wished the jury to hear from Janice, permitting her no opportunity to flesh out, embellish, or develop any points or stray into areas that could in any way provide the defense with an opening wedge on cross-examination that would be detrimental to the people’s case. Even Brice Mack had to admit it was an astonishing feat of legal legerdemain.
At last, Scott Velie turned to the defense attorney.
“Cross-examine,” he said.
“Your Honor”—Brice Mack purposely kept the moment dangling, taking an obvious sadistic pleasure in tantalizing the frightened woman in the witness box—“may I say that as long as Mrs. Templeton is shielded by the rules of evidentiary procedure, there is little I can hope to learn in cross-examination. However, there is a great deal to be learned from this witness and from the witness preceding her, a great many truths that have been suppressed by my distinguished colleague’s artful and inspired direct examination.” His eyes fixed Janice with a cold, steely look of warning. “Truths that I fully intend to bring forth into the light of day. Therefore, I have no questions of the witness at this time, but I will certainly want her back as a witness for the defense.”
“Very well,” Judge Langley said as Brice Mack strode back to the defense table. “The witness is excused but instructed to keep herself available as a witness for the defense.”
Turning to Scott Velie, who was heavily engaged in a strategy powwow with his associate, Judge Langley dryly registered his annoyance.
“Mr. Velie, if you will forgive the court’s interruption, we are awaiting the calling of your next witness.”
“If the court please,” Velie said, rising with an apologetic smile, “that is my case. I have no further evidence to put on at this time.”
“In that case,” said Judge Langley with a solemn rap of his gavel, “we will continue the trial until Monday morning at nine o’clock. The defendant is remanded to custody.”
Rising from her chair, moving unsurely and unsteadily toward Bill, Janice experienced the sense of elation, the delicious inertia of a person stumbling dazed but unscathed away from a plane crash.
The time for telling Ivy “all the facts” came the following evening just after they had returned from delivering Mina back to the school and had settled themselves into their family suite at the Candlemas Inn.
Bill and Janice had driven up earlier in the day, arriving just after lunch, in time to sit in on afternoon choir practice along with a number of other parents. Ivy’s vivid blond beauty could be easily distinguished among the group of girls in the alto section. It was during Handel’s Kryie Eleison that Janice began to sense the first vague stirrings of interest and curiosity in the air—the secretive glances, smirks, and whisperings flitted about them like straws in a high wind.
Even more disturbing were the bright, darting glances they received from the girls as they bounded past them out of the chapel and into the snow-clad yard, where a headless Sylvester awaited their attention. Ivy and Mina brought up the rear, their hands clasped, moving slowly and indolently up to them, both wearing brave smiles in the presence of tragedy.
“Hi, Daddy. Hi, Mommy,” Ivy said wanly. “You remember Mina.”
“Sure, Princess.” Bill smiled. “Hi, Mina.”
“Hi, Mr. Templeton. Hi, Mrs. Templeton,” Mina said, passing the ball to Janice.
“Hello, Mina,” Janice said, completing the circle of greetings.
Bill bent to kiss Ivy and felt her flinch the slightest millimeter. Janice noticed and quickly asked, “Gonna go to work on Sylvester?”
“Not today, we don’t feel like it.”
“No,” Mina repeated with distaste, “we don’t feel like it.”
“Well, then,” Janice said with a surge of enthusiasm, “why don’t you girls go and get ready for our little party?”
The prospect of dinner out brightened the moment for Mina at least. After they had left to shower and change into their prettiest dresses, permitted at Mount Carmel only on weekends or on family outings, Bill and Janice walked across the yard, past the towering snowman under construction, and entered the administration building.
“One of the girls smuggled newspapers into the dormitory. We think it was Jill O’Connor, but we are not sure of it.”
Several copies of the Westport Guardian containing the front-page item “Jurors hear tape of principals in reincarnation-kidnapping case” were spread open on the mother superior’s desk. Mother Veronica Joseph’s eyes held the familiar note of pity and compassion, but the set of her face had altered, Bill thought; had hardened, become stern, even severe.
“I will talk to the parents collectively before they leave today and seek their cooperation in the matter. And I’ve asked Father Paul to speak to the children during mass in the morning.”