“Of what?”
“Of someone who understands his problem better now, and wants to deal with it and can deal with it.”
“We must go.”
“Here, take this file.” I slip it into my briefcase. “He wants to take the witness stand, Arthur. He needs to. He wants to unload. Everything.”
“Let’s talk about it on the way.”
I rise. She takes my hand, stilling me.
“He has to, Arthur. He needs to live with himself.”
“But does he need to live in a ten-by-ten cell? There are a dozen reasons to keep him off the stand, not the least of which is an annoying flaw in him that your acute mind must have observed: He handles truth poorly.”
“He didn’t rape her.”
“But I assume he told you he tied Kimberley up.”
“It was play.”
“And do you believe that?”
“I do. We had a powerful session on Sunday. He’s gone through a deep personal epiphany, Arthur.”
As I usher Jane into court, I realize we have far from finished our conversation, and I am even further from formulating new strategies. I must buy time. The defence must regroup, reorganize, rethink its handling of Kimberley Martin. “You look like doom, “Augustina says as I join her at counsel table.
“Jonathan is consumed by a compulsion to bare all in an orgy of truth-telling.” I hear Margaret taunting me: But isn’t that what the jury should hear — the truth?
I have no time to elucidate, for Hedy Jackson-Blyth is leading in the jury — she has the intrepid look of a firm believer, one whose mind will not be altered.
His lordship takes his seat at the bench, well recovered now, but looking remarkably like a recalcitrant child expecting to be sent to his room, still smarting with embarrassment over the fool’s role he played two nights ago. Hopefully, he will be eager to return to the great one’s good books and not try to cross my path today.
“Ms. Foreperson, members of the jury, good morning.” He nods at them in greeting, then turns to counsel and says with what seems forced cheer, “Well, what do we have on the menu? I don’t think Mr. Beauchamp is finished with the complainant.”
“Yes, but Dr. Sanchez is still here,” says Patricia. “I think she’s in a hurry to get back to the hospital.”
Augustina will cross-examine her; I am anxious to use the time to read Jane’s interview transcripts. “No problem,” I say. “Let us hear from the good doctor.”
Wally smiles sunnily upon me: he has forgiven the past. “That’s white of you, Mr. Beauchamp.”
A long moment occurs while I await the redness, the sputter, the realization he has spoken with great linguistic imprudence. But he seems blissfully unaware of his clanger and fails to observe Mrs. Nevers, the one black person on the jury, looking at him in shock. Nor can he conceive why Patricia is staring dumbly at him.
“Well? Let’s get the show on the road, Ms. Blueman.”
I have no time to further relish this malapropos moment, and listen with only half an ear to the evidence of the pathologist, a plump, grey-haired Salvadoran refugee, as I pore through Jane Dix’s portfolio of pain.
While I read the underlined selections from Jonathan’s interviews, Dr. Sanchez’s words and phrases float by, just within my aural range: abrasion, haematoma, reddened areas, chafed epidermal tissue.
The condensed transcripts give a graphic history of the conquest of Jonathan’s inner self, his gradual loss of defences, the bludgeoning of his walls, the capture of the helpless survivor within. I break away from this as Augustina begins her cross of Dr. Sanchez: it is a skilful bandaging act, minimizing the bruising, hinting at a possible source in drunken sexual horseplay.
But some jurors are frowning. Too much is being asked of them. Wally remains outside the arena, though making a great show of his attentiveness.
“Dr. Sanchez, you took a swab from deep within her vagina?”
“Yes.”
“And you searched microscopically for sperm?” “For a long time, yes.”
“And what did the absence of sperm tell you?”
“That she had not had intercourse with ejaculation for at least the last twenty-four hours — unless an impervious prophylactic device had been employed.”
“By that you mean a condom.”
“Yes.”
“Had the complainant taken a douche a few hours earlier, would that in any way alter your opinion?”
“No, Miss Sage. I would still have expected to find motile sperm.”
I return to the transcripts, to the disassembling of O’Donnell, rebel son of the tyrant Viscount Caraway. Jane has excerpted dozens of pages from her final interview with Jonathan — only last Sunday. The final uncut version of the truth. I am struck by a phrase: A stolen kiss, the slightest touch of lip on lip, that was my crime.
I read for several minutes until Dr. Sanchez leaves the stand. “That’s the final witness, m’lord,” says Patricia. “But I expect my learned friend has more questions of Kimberley Martin.”
“We’ll break now,” says Wally. “Ten minutes.”
The room clears. “Very nice work with the pathologist, Augustina. Excuse me for a few minutes.”
She watches me, puzzled, as I reach into her briefcase and draw out the paperback reprint of Saint Joan. I open it to the lipstick smudge. I stare at it, a blood-red blot upon the scene in which Joan revokes her recantation and is sentenced to burn. The author instructs: The glow and flicker of fire can now be seen reddening the May daylight.
I turn quickly back to Jane’s final interview.
There’s just a whole load of stuff she just doesn’t remember.
What do you mean?
Or for some reason remembers it differently from me.
Why do you want to give her that out?
But why doesn’t she remember?
Yes, Kimberley, why? I watch her bend to Dr. Benjamin Kropinski in whispered consultation. Jonathan is also looking upon her, with an expression of deep melancholy.
I return to my reading, calling upon the counsel of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, for the solution to Jonathan, to Kimberley, for a means to storm the gates of Ilium and bring home victory’s booty.
Upon the jury’s return, I rise with a false show of enthusiasm, shamming an eagerness to continue my cross of the complainant. Kimberley wins an encouraging nod from Dr. Kropinski, then takes several long-legged strides to the witness box. I am somewhat taken aback at her choice of attire this morning: a vermilion dress too tightly revealing, too daring for this solemn occasion; a belted waist, a callipygian show of rump. Perhaps she intends to continue her seduction of Walter Sprogue. He nods at her; they exchange smiles. The maid of Orleans has him in the sight of her crossbow.
“I’m sorry we’ve delayed you again, Miss Martin,” I say.
“That’s fine.” She shakes her curls, leans not back but forward: the confident witness.
“We’re all trying to figure out what went on during the small hours of November twenty-eighth, so I’m just going to bandy a few ideas about.”
“Whatever. Sure.”
” ‘He’s going to kill me.’ There’s no doubt you spoke those words, Miss Martin, but I’m going to ask you to think about this and be fair. In truth, you don’t feel your life was threatened?”
She ponders her answer. “No, I guess not. When he was filling the bathtub, I had this flash I might be drowned or something. But it was just a panic thing.”