Korrogly walked to the table and leaned forward, resting his hands so that the splayed tips of his fingers were nearly touching Lemos’ fingers. Lemos did not move his hands away, did not appear to notice the closeness of Korrogly’s hands, and this indicated that he was truly overborne by all that had happened, and not putting on an act. Either that, Korrogly thought, or the man’s got the nervous system of a snail.
‘You’re asking me to attempt a defense that’s never been used before,’ he said. ‘Now that I think of it, I’m amazed no one’s ever tried it. Griaule’s influence – over the Carbonales Valley, anyway – is not in doubt. But to claim you were enacting his will, that some essence embodied in the gem inspired you to serve as his agent, to use that as a defense in a criminal case . . . I don’t know.’
Lemos appeared not to have heard: after a moment he said, ‘Mirielle . . . is she all right?’
Irritated, Korrogly said, ‘Yes, yes, she’s fine. Were you listening to what I just said?’
Lemos stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Your story,’ Korrogly said, ‘appears to demand a defense that has never been used. Never. Do you know what will attend that?’
‘No,’ said Lemos, and lowered his eyes.
‘Judges are not delighted by the prospect of setting precedent, and whoever presides over your trial is going to be particularly loath to establish this sort of precedent. Because if it is established, God knows how many villains will seek to use it to avoid punishment.’
Lemos was silent for a few seconds and then said, ‘I don’t understand. What do you wish me to say?’
Studying his face, Korrogly had a feeling of uneasiness: Lemos’ despair seemed too uniform, too all-encompassing. He had acted for a number of clients who had been in the grip of terrible despair, but even the most despondent of these had on occasion suddenly realized their plight and exhibited fright or desperation or some variant emotion. He had the idea that Lemos was an intelligent man, one capable of such a subtle deceit as this might be.
‘It’s not necessary that you say anything,’ he told Lemos. ‘I simply want you to understand the course you’ve set me. If I were to plead for mercy from the court, ask them to recognize the passions involved, to take into account the unscrupulous nature of the deceased, I’m confident that your sentence would be light. Zemaille was not well loved, and there are many who consider what you’ve done an act of conscience.’
‘Not I,’ said Lemos in such an agonized tone that Korrogly was persuaded for the moment to complete belief.
‘However,’ he went on, ‘should I pursue the defense that your story suggests, you may wind up facing a much harsher sentence, perhaps even the ultimate. That you choose to defend in this manner might imply to the judge that the crime was premeditated. Thus he would allow no mediating circumstance in his instructions to the jury. He would dismiss all possibility of it being a crime of passion.’
Lemos gave a dispirited laugh.
‘That amuses you?’ Korrogly asked.
‘I find it simplistic that passion and premeditation are deemed to be mutually exclusive.’
Korrogly moved away from the table, folded his arms, and regarded the luminous globe overhead. ‘Of course that’s not always the case. Not all crimes of passion are considered acts of the moment. There is leeway left for obsession, for irresistible compulsion. But what I’m telling you is that the judge in his desire to avoid setting precedent might block these avenues of mercy in his instructions to the jury.’
Once again Lemos appeared to have slipped into a reverie.
‘Have you decided?’ Korrogly insisted. ‘I can’t decide for you, I can only recommend.’
‘You seem to be recommending that I lie,’ said Lemos.
‘How do you arrive at that?’
‘You tell me the truth is a risk, that the secure course is best.’
‘I’m merely counseling you as to the potential pitfalls.’
‘There’s a fine line, is there not, between recommendation and counsel?’
‘Between guilt and innocence also,’ said Korrogly, thinking he might get a rise out of Lemos with this; but the gemcutter only stared at the table, brushed back his sandy forelock from his eyes.
‘Very well.’ Korrogly picked up his case from the floor. ‘I’ll assume you want me to go forward with the case as you’ve presented it.’
‘Mirielle,’ said Lemos. ‘Will you ask her to come and visit me?’
‘I will.’
‘Today . . . will you ask her today?’
‘I plan to see her this afternoon, and I’ll ask her. But according to the constables, she may not respond favorably to anything I ask on your behalf. She is apparently quite bereft.’
Lemos muttered something, and when Korrogly asked him to repeat it, he said, ‘Nothing.’
‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’
Lemos shook his head.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Korrogly; he started to tell Lemos to be of good cheer, but partly in recognition of the profundity of Lemos’ despair, partly due to his continuing sense of uneasiness, he thought better of it.
The gemcutter’s shop was in the Almintra quarter of Port Chantay, a section of the city bordering the ocean, touched yet not overwhelmed by decay and poverty. Dozens of shops were situated on the bottom floors of old peeling frame houses with witchy-looking peaked roofs and gables, and between them, Korrogly could see the houses of the wealthy ranging Ayler Point: airy mansions with wide verandahs and gilt roofs nestled among stands of thistle palms. The sea beyond the point was a smooth jade-colored expanse broken by creamy surf, seeming to carry out the theme of elegance stated by the mansions; on the other hand, the breakers that heaped foam upon the beaches of the Almintra quarter were fouled with seaweed and driftwood and offal. It must, he thought, be dismaying to the residents of the quarter, which not so long ago had been considered exclusive, to have this view of success and beauty, and then to turn back to their own lives and watch the rats scurrying in piles of vegetable litter, the ghost crabs scuttling in the sandy streets, the beggars, the increasing dilapidation of their homes. He wondered if this could have played a part in the murder; he could discern no opportunity for profit in the crime, but there was so much still hidden, and he did not want to blind himself to the existence of such a motive. He did not believe Lemos, yet he could not fully discredit the gemcutter’s story. That was the story’s virtue: its elusiveness, the way it played upon the superstitious nature of the citizenry, how it employed the vast subtlety of Griaule to spread confusion through the mind of whomever sought to judge it. The jury was going to have one hell of a time. And, he thought, so was he. He could not deny the challenge presented him; a case of this sort came along but rarely, and its materials, so aptly suited to the game of the law, to the lawyerly sleights-of-hand that had turned the law into a game, afforded him the opportunity of making a quick reputation. His inability to discredit Lemos’ story might be a product of his hope that the gemcutter was telling the truth, that precedent was indeed involved, for he was beginning to realize that he needed something spectacular, something unique and unsettling, to reawaken his old hopes and enthusiasms, to restore his sense of self-worth. For the nine years since his graduation from law school, he had devoted himself to his practice, achieving a small success, all that could be expected of someone who was the son of poor farmers; he had watched less skilled lawyers achieve greater success, and he had come to understand what he should have understood from the beginning: that the Law was subordinate to the unwritten laws of social status and blood relation. He was at the age of thirty-three an idealist whose ideals were foundering, yet whose fascination with the game remained undimmed, and this had left him open to a dangerous cynicism – dangerous in that it had produced in him a volatile mixture of old virtues and new half-understood compulsions. Lately the bubblings up of that mixture had tended to make him erratic, prone to wild swings of mood and sudden abandonments of hope and principle. He was, he thought, in much the same condition as the Almintra quarter: a working class neighborhood funded by solid values that had once looked forward to an upwardly mobile future, but that now aspired to be a slum.