“Yes, my lord.”
Callender smiled tightly. “And didn’t the accused ask whether the murder weapon had been found?”
“I believe he did.”
“Now, under the circumstances, wasn’t it a perfectly normal question for him to ask? If a man could be convicted without the weapon?”
“Not an unusual question, no, sir.”
“And did you not say to the accused, ‘They are making a fuss about Sir Harry because he has dough. If it had been some poor colored bastard in Grant’s Town, I would not have to work so hard’?”
“I don’t recall saying any such thing.”
“Don’t you frequently use the expression ‘bastard’?”
“I seldom ever use that word.”
Callender’s smile was gone; he thrust a finger at the dapper little Scotsman. “I put it to you, Lieutenant Douglas, that ‘bastard’ is a favorite term of yours!”
“I deny it.”
“And I further put it to you that you were the one who said, ‘That old bastard should have been killed anyway.’”
“I deny it. Those are the accused’s words.”
“That is all, my lord,” Callender said.
An effective piece of cross-examination-but Douglas was a solid witness. Freddie looked glum in his cage, his cockiness knocked out of him.
The following day began melodramatically, even for the Oakes case: Lady Oakes, allowed to sit in the witness box, in black silk dress with black veiled hat and black gloves, spoke softly, convincingly, of the strain placed upon their family by her daughter’s marriage to Count de Marigny.
She would cool herself with a palm fan, raise a glass of water to her lips with a trembling hand; it was a performance that garnered much sympathy. And, cynical though I may sound, it was a performance: this gaunt, teary-eyed, frail widow was not the strong woman I had met in Nancy’s room back at the Biltmore in Miami Beach.
Not to mention the iron-willed broad who had got me bounced out of the B.C.
Still, I thought of the parade of witnesses designed to make a devil out of Freddie, Eunice Oakes was the weakest. She just didn’t have anything to say: Freddie wrote a “horrible” letter, critical of Sir Harry, to their impressionable son Sydney; Freddie had apparently encouraged Nancy to break from her parents if they would not accept him “into the family circle.”
That was about it.
Higgs asked only six gentle questions by way of cross, including: “Lady Oakes, did you ever hear the accused make any threat of bodily injury to your husband?”
“Of course not,” she almost snapped.
That was the Lady Oakes I had met at the Biltmore!
“And to your knowledge,” Higgs was saying, “the accused’s only complaint was that you and Sir Harry had not accepted him into the family?”
“I assume so.”
“My lord, I have no further questions.”
The rest of that morning and afternoon, too, found the pride of the Miami Homicide Bureau, Captain Edward Melchen, standing in the witness box, fat, florid, fidgety. For several hours, Adderley led Melchen through a rehash of his preliminary hearing testimony, covering the investigation, the arrest of de Marigny, remarks about Sir Harry the accused had allegedly made.
Higgs handed the cross to his eager assistant, and Callender went for the throat almost immediately.
“Captain, what important piece of evidence did your associate James Barker reveal to Lady Oakes and Mrs. de Marigny, at Bar Harbor after Sir Harry’s funeral?”
Melchen licked his lips. “Captain Barker informed them that de Marigny’s fingerprint had been found on the Chinese screen.”
“A fingerprint?”
Melchen shrugged. “He might have said ‘fingerprints.’”
“Did you and Captain Barker travel together, from Nassau to Bar Harbor?”
Callender’s precise British-Bahamian diction somehow made Melchen’s Southern drawl seem lazy, even stupid.
“Of course we did.”
“Did you discuss the Oakes case?”
“Yes we did.”
“Did you discuss the discovery of this most vital piece of evidence?”
Melchen winced; he seemed confused.
“The fingerprint or fingerprints, Captain Melchen. Did you discuss them with your partner?”
Melchen tasted his tongue for a while; then said, “Ah…it never came up.”
“Sir?”
“We did not discuss them.”
The courtroom’s surprise was evident in the wave of muttering that passed over it, and so was the Chief Justice’s, as he looked up from the longhand notes he was taking.
Callender closed in. “You and Captain Barker had been called in on this case, and worked as partners?”
“Yes.”
“You had traveled all the way from Nassau together?”
“Yes.”
“And the first time you heard of this vital evidence, Captain Melchen, was when Captain Barker informed Lady Oakes and Nancy de Marigny of it?”
“Uh…yes.”
“Yet Captain Barker claims to have known about this evidence since the ninth of July, the day the accused was arrested. And now you stand here, swearing under oath that you traveled with Captain Barker from Nassau to Bar Harbor, during which time you discussed the case but Barker never once mentioned this important fact to you?”
“That, uh, is correct. Yes.”
Callender walked over to the jury and smiled and shook his head; behind him on the bench, Chief Justice Daly was asking Melchen, “Do you not now consider it strange, sir, that Captain Barker did not tell you about the fingerprint on your journey to Bar Harbor?”
“Well,” Melchen said lamely, with the wide-eyed expression of a child reporting to his teacher that his dog ate his homework, “now that I think of it…I do remember Captain Barker goin’ with Major Pemberton to the RAF laboratory to process a print they said was of the accused. On the ninth of July?”
The Chief Justice rolled his eyes and threw down his pencil in annoyance.
Callender took advantage of the moment and moved in for the kill.
“Then let us move to July nine, Captain. That is the day you and Captain Barker recommended the arrest of the accused?”
“Yes.”
Callender thrust an accusatory finger. “I put it to you, Captain Melchen, that your preliminary testimony, fixing the time of the accused’s questioning on July nine as between three and four p.m., was a fabrication designed to prove that the accused was not upstairs before the fingerprint was lifted!”
Melchen loosened his sweat-soaked collar; his smile was pained, strained. “That wasn’t my intention at all-my…my memory was at fault on that point. It was just a mistake.”
“Ah, and what a mistake!” Callender sneered. “And what a remarkable coincidence that you and two local constables should make the same mistake.”
Melchen smiled feebly, and shrugged.
“Nothing further, my lord,” Callender said disgustedly.
Next up was Barker himself, but the rugged-looking, lanky detective-with his direct blue eyes and dark graying-at-the-temples hair-was (unlike his partner) no easily rattled boob. He presented a professional, almost distinguished demeanor, standing casually, confidently, in the witness box, hands in the pockets of the trousers of his gray, double-breasted suit.
The Attorney General himself took the witness, and both the questions and the answers seemed too pat, too precise to me. Over-rehearsed. But the jury-despite the sorry shambling act presented by his partner, Melchen-seemed to be hanging on Barker’s every expert word.
Much of the afternoon was spent establishing Barker’s impressive-sounding credentials, and going back over the investigation of the crime and the arrest of the Count. Shortly after Hallinan guided Barker into a discussion of the fingerprint evidence, however, Higgs made a major play, objecting to the admission as evidence of the de Marigny fingerprint.
“This print is not the best evidence,” Higgs told the Chief Justice. “The screen with the print on it is.”