“Well, she told me — ”
“Objection,” says Wally Sprogue. “That’s hearsay.” He has risen an inch from his chair, but sheepishly settles back. Wally has forgotten he is no longer a lowly barrister: I cannot help but smile.
“Objection sustained,” I say. “Old habits die hard, m’lord.”
“Yes. Quite. Carry on, witness.” He is flustered; how easily the vain embarrass.
“Anyway, it would make more sense for her to take another cab after she slept it off a little.” Stubb adds: “We knew she’d be okay. We knew Professor O’Donnell wouldn’t — ”
“Thank you. Those are all my questions.”
“Let the witness finish,” says Wally.
“He wants to answer a question I didn’t ask him,” Patricia says.
Wally purrs to the young man: “What were you about to say, sir?”
“Professor O’Donnell acted like a gentleman all evening. He would never do a thing like this.”
“Thank you. Cross-examination, Mr. Beauchamp?”
I have not liked Stubb’s evidence at all. Too glossy, too puffy, too sycophantic. Cross-examination would seem utterly self-serving. “Nothing, thank you.”
Stubb walks from the stand looking disappointed; he had more to say. Patricia, in a severe pet, talks heatedly with her assistant, Sindelar, then turns on Wally. “I hope it’s clearly on the record that his last little speech was elicited by your lordship.”
Wally assumes a hurt expression. “That’s what you get for cutting him off. We’ll take the mid-afternoon break.”
In the mezzanine, Kimberley Martin and Clarence de Remy Brown are chatting with Paula Yi — much too amicably. Miss Yi will be the next witness: a rebel, a feminist, a victim herself of male assault, she must be handled with scrupulous care.
Farther down the hallway I am shocked to observe Jonathan in an altercation with Dominique Lander, who has him backed against a wall. From their expressions, the exchange seems sharp.
Jonathan tries gently to push her away and she slaps his hand. As I advance quickly to intervene, she slaps him again, in the face, then rushes away. I look about for jurors, but thankfully none are present, though others have observed this tatty scene — including Kimberley Martin, seeming quite taken aback.
Jonathan is breathing heavily. “Love taps. It’s her way of showing affection. I told her to get out of my life, Arthur, that’s all that happened.”
The Commander is severe with him. “You will not converse with anyone but your lawyers, do you understand that?”
“Mea culpa.”
I am unsure what effect the episode has on Kimberley, but as I pass her on my way back to court she is smiling. A small benefit is derived from the contretemps: Miss Lander does not return to court.
“Call Paula Yi,” Patricia says.
Petite Miss Yi enters the courtroom tentatively, obviously nervous. She is dressed casually: jeans and a floppy sweater rolled at the sleeves.
Patricia repeatedly asks Miss Yi to keep her voice up; she is so soft-spoken we must strain to hear. Our untrained puppy of a judge continues to intervene, seeking clarifications, expanding the answers; he will earn a poor reputation if this keeps up. Like a child, a good judge should be seen and not heard.
But my love-addled mind is unable to concentrate — as the scene Miss Yi describes is about to shift from the student dance to the danse macabre, my brain shifts, too, blown by a sudden southwesterly down Potter’s Road, past Stoney’s place to where the chickens freely range upon the road. I pause there to seek Margaret, but she is not to be found.
I feel a need to hear her voice. I require an earnest of faith from her, a reassurance. I must know that her whispered contemplation of the possibility of love has not been scrutinized in the cold, hard light of day, withdrawn, discarded with the morning’s compost.
I’m not ready. Yet.
“ Mr. Beauchamp?”
Dimly, I hear a voice that doesn’t belong in my reveries.
“Do you wish to cross-examine?”
I plummet from the clouds and plop onto my chair at counsel table. One of the trial’s most important witnesses is on the stand, and I have missed a vital scene: the snorting of coke in the rumpus room. I look uneasily about. Has anyone noticed I was gone? Augustina, for one. She frowns, a warning look: Stop gambolling in those fields of daisies.
I rise in cross-examination with a snap of my suspenders. But I have early trouble finding my bearings. “Miss Yi, I understand you had never met Kimberley Martin or Jonathan O’Donnell before that evening?”
“That is right. That’s what I said.”
“And they were so friendly at the dance, you thought they were paired off as a couple.”
“Yes, I already said that.”
“Yes. Now, you told the jury about an interesting episode in the rumpus room.”
“Well, no, I didn’t.”
“We didn’t hear anything about a rumpus room, Mr. Beauchamp,” Wally says. “Maybe we should check if that’s just water in your pitcher.”
This is a disaster. I have taken on the role of the court jester. But worse, has this reluctant witness gone over to the other side? In my confusion, I overreact. “Do you deny it? I’m talking about the cocaine, Miss Yi.”
She looks at me with puzzlement. “No, I don’t deny it. The prosecutor never asked me.”
“Mr. Beauchamp, are we at different trials?” Wally is enjoying this tremendously, spearing me as I writhe on the floor.
“Sixty-two years of losing brain cells may have caught up to me, m’lord. Let’s work our way out of this maze, Miss Yi. There was an episode in the rumpus room.”
“Yes. Sort of between acts.”
Meanly, Patricia has left it up to me to call evidence that could injure reputation. “Tell us exactly what happened.”
“Well, there was a bathroom break, and Egan Chornicky sort of pointed to his nose.”
“His nose?”
“Well, giving me a signal. So I followed him downstairs, into this room with a bar and a pool table. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble….” She falters.
“I’ll say it for you. Mr. Chornicky produced some cocaine.”
“Yes. From a little folded-up envelope, and he laid out some lines on the bar. Chopped them with a penknife.”
“Was there conversation?”
“He was pretty drunk. Didn’t know whose house he was in, actually.”
“That’s hearsay,” says Wally.
“This is cross-examination.”
“I’m afraid it’s still hearsay.” He smiles at me. He hopes I’ll understand.
“Miss Martin joined you, did she not?”
“Yes, and Egan passed her a rolled-up bill and she.. ”Again her voice becomes indistinct.
“She knew what to do with it.” “She did two of the lines.”
“There may be some here who are not familiar with the process of doing lines. Would you describe it?”
I finally seem to be on track. As Miss Yi relates to the uninitiated the art of snorting cocaine, I seek reaction from the jury. The smile on the face of Goodman, the broker, hints he needs no schooling. Hedy Jackson-Blyth has the peeved look of one whose bridge partner has trumped her ace. Two stripes of a mood-altering substance about the length and thickness of a match stick have disappeared up the complainant’s nose: She will not be seen as the soul of innocence.
“Was this cocaine fairly strong?”
“Yes, Egan said — ”
“No,” the judge warns. “You can’t tell us what someone other than the accused said.”
This is wearying. I sigh rather audibly. “You’ve used cocaine before.”
“Yes. Not a lot.”
“And in your experience, was it potent?”
“I’d say so.”
“Cocaine’s a sleep inhibitor, is it not?”
“I think you’ll need to call a pharmacologist for that, Mr. Beauchamp,” says the judge. “Sorry.”
I must keep my temper. “It certainly didn’t make you feel sleepy, did it?”
“No, but — ”
“It stimulated you — ”
“Let her complete her last answer, Mr. Beauchamp.”