‘Relevant . . . possibly not. But it speaks to the fact that you’re not in the least interested in helping him.’
‘I’ve made no secret of that.’
‘No, you haven’t. But the history of your emotions will be helpful in pointing up that you’re a vindictive bitch and that your idea of the truth is whatever will hurt your father. It has no relation to what really happened.’
He had been trying to make her angry, wanting to get an idea of her boiling point, knowledge that would come in handy during the trial; but her smile only broadened, she crossed her legs and traced a florid shape in the air with the tip of her cigar. She was very cool, he thought, very cool. But in court that would work against her; it would cast Lemos in a more benign light, show him to be the patient, caring parent in contrast to her vengeful ingrate. Of course that would be more significant to a defense based on compulsion, on wrong-headed passion; but Korrogly believed he could color his actual defense with this other and so win the jury’s sympathy.
‘Well,’ he said, coming to his feet. ‘I may have some more questions later, but I don’t see any use in continuing this now.’
‘You think you’ve got me, don’t you?’
‘Got you? I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You think you’ve got me figured out.’
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
‘And how you would portray me in court?’
‘I’m sure you must have an idea.’
‘Oh, but I’d like to hear it.’
‘All right. If necessary I’ll paint a picture of a spoiled, indulgent creature who has no real feelings for anyone. Even her grief for her lover seems to be no more than a kind of adornment, an accessory to be worn with a black dress. And in her degeneracy, a condition prompted by drugs and the black arts, by the depraved rituals of the dragon cult, the only emotions she is capable of mustering are those she thinks will serve her ends. Greed, perhaps. And vengefulness.’
She let out a lazy chuckle.
‘That strikes you as inaccurate?’
‘Not at all, lawyer. What amuses me is that knowing this, you think you can use it to your advantage.’ She turned on her side, supporting her head with one hand, her skirt twisting beneath her, exposing even more pale firm flesh. ‘I’ll look forward to our next meeting. Perhaps by then your understanding of the situation will have grown more complex, and you’ll have more . . . more interesting questions to ask.’
‘May I ask one further question now?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She rolled onto her back, cutting her eyes toward him.
‘This display of yours, the dress up to your waist and all that, is it intended to arouse me?’
She nodded. ‘Mmm-hmm. Is it working?’
‘Why?’ he said. ‘What possible benefit do you think that’ll gain you? Do you think I’ll defend your father with less enthusiasm?’
‘I don’t know . . . will you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then it’ll be for nothing,’ she said. ‘But that’s all right, too.’
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her legs.
‘Really, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I need a lover now. And I like you. You’re funny, but I like you anyway.’
He stared at her, his anger alternating with desire. Knowing that he could have her alarmed him. He could go to her now, this moment, and it would affect nothing, it would have no resonance with the trial, it would merely be an indulgence. Yet he understood that it was this increasing openness to indulgence that signaled his impending moral shipwreck. To reject her would not be an act of prudishness, but one of salvation.
‘It’ll be good with us,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling for these things.’
His eye followed the line of her thigh to the white seashell curve of her hip; her fingers were long, slender, and he imagined how they might touch him.
‘I have to be going,’ he said.
‘Yes, I think you’d better.’ Her voice was charged with gleeful spite. ‘That was a near thing, wasn’t it? You might have actually enjoyed yourself.’
Two
During the next week Korrogly interviewed many witnessess, among them Henry Sichi, who reported that when Lemos purchased the gemstone, he had been so entranced by it, so absorbed, that Sichi had found it necessary to give him a nudge in order to alert him sufficiently to complete the deal. He spoke to various members of Lemos’ guild, all of whom were willing to testify to the mildness and honesty of his character; they described him as a man obsessed with his work, obsessed to the point of absentmindness, drawing a vastly different picture of the man than had Mirielle. Korrogly had known quite a few men who had presented an exemplary public face and a wholly contradictory one in private; yet there was no doubt that the guildsmen’s testimony would outweigh Mirielle’s . . . in fact, whatever Mirielle said in evidence would, no matter how hostile, benefit Lemos’ case because of its vile context. He sought out experts on Griaule’s history and talked to people who’d had personal experience of Griaule’s influence. The only witness whose testimony ran contrary to the defense was that of an old man, a drunkard who was in the habit of sleeping it off in the dunes south of Ayler Point and on several occasions had seen Lemos hurling stones at a sign post, hurling them over and over again as if practicing for the fatal toss; the old man’s alcoholism would diminish the impact of the testimony, but it was nevertheless of consequence.
When Korrogly related it to Lemos, the gemcutter said, ‘I often walk out past the point of an afternoon, and sometimes I throw stones to relax. It was my only talent as a child, and I suppose I seek refuge in it when the world becomes too much to bear.’
Like every other bit of evidence, this too, Korrogly saw, was open to interpretation; it was conceivable, for instance, that Griaule’s choice of Lemos as an agent had been in part made because of this aptitude for throwing stones, that he had been moved by the dragon to practice in preparation for the violent act. He looked across the table at his client. Jail, it appeared, was turning Lemos gray. His skin, the tenor of his emotions, everything about him was going gray, and Korrogly felt infected by that grayness, felt that the gray was the color of the case, of all its indistinct structures and indefinite truths, and that it was spreading through him and wearing him away. He asked again if he could do anything for Lemos, and again Lemos’ answer was that he wished to see Mirielle.
On a Sunday in late March, Korrogly interviewed an elderly and wealthy woman who had until shortly before the murder been an active member of the Temple of the Dragon. The woman was known only as Kirin, and her past was a shadow; she seemed not to have existed prior to her emergence within the strictures of the temple, and since leaving it, she had lived a secretive life, known to the public only through the letters that she occasionally wrote to the newspaper attacking the cult. He was met at the door by a thick-waisted drab, apparently the woman’s servant, who led him in a room that seemed to have been less decorated than to have sprung from a green and leafy enchantment. It was roofed by a faceted skylight, divided by carved wooden screens, all twined with vines and epiphytes; plants of every variety choked the avenues among the screens, their foliage so luxuriant that sprays of leaves hid the pots in which they were rooted. The sun illuminated a profusion of greens – pale pomona, nile, emerald, viridian, and chartreuse; intricate shadows dappled the hardwood floors. The fronds of sword ferns twitched in the breeze like the feelers of enormous insects.
After wandering through this jungly environment for nearly half an hour, growing more and more impatient, Korrogly was hailed by a fluting female voice, which asked him to call out so that she might find him among the leaves. Moments later, a tall white-haired woman in a floor-length gown of gray watered silk came up beside him; her face was the color of old ivory, deeply wrinkled and stamped with what struck Korrogly as a stern and suspicious character, and her hands moved ceaselessly, plucking at the nearby leaves as if they were the telling beads of some meditative religion. Despite her age, she radiated energy, and Korrogly thought that if he were to close his eyes, he would have the impression that he was in the presence of a vital young woman. She directed him to a bench in a corner of the room and sat next to him, gazing out into the lushness of her sanctum, continuing to pluck and pick at stem and leaf.