“Well, he stumbled against the railing and knocked the chair over. But he steadied himself, and he didn’t look over the railing, didn’t look down there, and…he ran to the staircase and down to the pool area. I called the police.”
“Describe the attacker.”
“Well, I would say he was the same man I saw earlier. Whom Rafael addressed as Cudworth.”
“Thank you, but describe his appearance.”
“Well, same build, hair, blue jeans…I couldn’t see their colour, to be honest, but they looked like the same pants, the shirt too, the shirttail was out. When he hurried off, he passed right under one of the night lights, and I could make out his face. It was the same person. His suspenders had come loose, they were just dangling there, and he was holding up his pants as he went down the stairs.”
Intimate detailing that added telling verisimilitude. Arthur shook his head, as if to clear it. Why was he buying all of this so readily? He was lapping from her cat dish, nearly as captivated as Wilbur Kroop. She may have rehearsed this disarming manner, spent hours, days, weeks in front of the mirror. A final turn under the spotlights for her last great role, witness for the prosecution.
“I am looking at the clock, Madam Prosecutor.” It was well past the afternoon break.
“Almost done, my lord. Ms. Leich, I would now ask you to look about the courtroom and tell us if you can see the man who propelled Mr. Justice Rafael Whynet-Moir to his death.” Spoken with brio, Abigail feeling her oats.
Leich looked first at the prisoner’s dock, as if expecting the accused to materialize there. She next checked out the defence table, quickly rejecting Wentworth as a possibility. She studied the dozen barristers in front of the bar, and fixed for a long moment on Silent Shawn Hamilton-so long that Shawn shifted uneasily. She looked at the jurors, as if half-expecting the culprit to have been set among them. Then the press table. Loobie bowed his head, scribbled a note, looking splendidly guilty.
“Ms. Leich, are you wearing your contacts?” Abigail was showing impatience.
“Yes. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to look.”
“The whole courtroom.”
“Oh, I see.” She began scanning it, front to back. A telltale squint.
“Madam, please feel free to step down from the witness stand and move about the courtroom.” Kroop gallantly spreading a cloak over the puddle of her confusion. “You may simply point to the man you have described.”
Leich stepped from the witness stand, hesitant, as if she’d been tossed a last-minute script, an unrehearsed scene. She again looked at Silent Shawn, and Arthur saw a likely reason why: his jacket was askew, a few inches of a blue suspender showing.
Leich went about her tour slowly and with great deliberation, aisle by aisle, row by row, face by face, ignoring women-except one husky lass keeping her pants up with wide brown braces.
All the men, even the aged, short, and overweight, earned a few moments of scrutiny, occasionally longer, seven or eight seconds for Dalgleish Ebbe. No braces showing, his suit buttoned tight.
The room was as silent as interstellar space. And then, ominously, a smothered hiccup at Arthur’s ear.
“Your pipe,” came Wentworth’s muffled plaint. “Must be in your pocket.” His face taut, his eyes bulging with the effort to stifle the next one.
Arthur whispered: “Get them under control or you’re fired.”
Wentworth’s face began to turn purple as Arthur redirected his attention to Leich, who had progressed to the third last row, Cud’s row. Arthur’s view was from an awkward angle but he was careful not to stand-that might tell Leich she was getting warm.
People shifted to give Leich room as she worked slowly past them and finally confronted Cud. He boldly met her gaze, expressionless. She tarried, stared, a breathless time.
Arthur worried that Wentworth might explode, though he emitted not a peep. But there came a sound from the gallery, a whimper, Felicity Jones daubing her eyes with a handkerchief. Arthur fought to suppress fury, this silly girl had signalled that Leich was not just getting warm but hot. But she didn’t look Felicity’s way, stayed with Cud. A slight nod of affirmation, as if she’d decided to tuck that one away.
Her pace accelerated down the penultimate row, mostly young Cuddites, no one qualifying for the medal round. In the final row, she stopped short on seeing Hank Chekoff, a kind of doubletake. The apparent message: Where have I seen this man before? “Oh, you!” she said, as she recognized the detective who, for the last four months, had been all but living with her.
Pomeroy was to Chekoff’s right, playing along, it would seem, being sensible and not acting out some wild paranoid delusion. But instead of meeting Leich’s eye, he was looking straight ahead. At Arthur, in fact. Looking at him with his trademark sardonic smile. He was letting Arthur know this was his book, his plot.
The witness stepped in front of Pomeroy, hampering Arthur’s view, but he could see April taking in the silent byplay, and was startled to see her go wide-eyed as Leich turned to the bench and said, “This is the man.”
Pomeroy’s smile had evaporated somewhere along the line, and he seemed in some kind of trance, mesmerized by the index finger pointing at him, with its manicured red nail.
Several silent seconds followed. April put a hand to her mouth, hiding a smile, a gesture that triggered a solution for Arthur that came with lovely clarity. Leich had assumed Chekoff had purposefully put himself next to the accused, to guard him perhaps, to prevent escape-or simply as a signal to pick the fellow on his right.
Though Brian had cleaned up his appearance, shaved off his moustache, he must have been imprinted in her memory from when she’d spied upon his extraordinary foray to Chateau LeGrand. A remake of an earlier scene, the same setting but in daylight, without a climactic death.
Abigail looked woebegone. “You are pointing to the man in the blue suit beside Sergeant Chekoff?”
“Yes, that’s him.” Confidently said, but she must have twigged from the tension in the room that something was amiss.
From behind Arthur, an undefined rumbling that resolved into the shape of words. “For the record…” Kroop cleared his throat. “For the record, the witness has identified Mr. Brian Pomeroy, a barrister known to this court…” His voice slowly rose to a terrible roar. “And who shouldn’t have been here in the first place!” Kroop slammed his desk book shut. “We’ll take the break!”
30
A traffic jam, reporters, and other smokers forming a flying wedge at the door, pushing past the health nuts, everyone on their feet but Wentworth. He tried to boost himself up, but his knees weren’t obeying. He twisted around, saw another frozen, seated figure, Hank Chekoff, alone, deserted, no colleagues to comfort a brother with his head on the block.
Pomeroy had been among the first wave out the door, April sailing along behind him, clutching his arm. Cudworth wasn’t far behind. Arthur wandered out, the remaining spectators opening a path for him, some of them bowing, like vassals of the king.
Get them under control or you’re fired. Somehow, this low, ferocious command had jolted Wentworth’s breathing apparatus, forcing open his recalcitrant glottis. He couldn’t remember a more fearsome threat since his mom dragged him to church and the pastor damned masturbators to suffer the eternal fires of hell. As a weird fallout he felt cured of his malady. He should go out with the smokers and test that thesis.
The prosecutors were sheltering Astrid Leich, who looked distraught, apologizing or explaining herself. Wentworth felt badly for her, she’d been upfront, self-effacing. She’d almost settled on Cud before happening on Pomeroy, who’d been sitting wrist to wrist with Chekoff, as if cuffed. Shifty-eyed, not meeting her gaze.