The Baker Street Jurors (7 page)

Nice touch, thought Nigel, writing in his notebook. Negate his hero status. Maybe we won't think that it's contradictory to claim jealous rage and an expectation of getting away with it at the same time. And now see if you can make us love the victim more than the perpetrator.

Slattery continued. “We will begin on the date of August fifteenth. Exactly one week prior to Marlie McSweeney's death. In some ways, it was a day like any other for Marlie. But in another way, a very important way, it was not.

“On that morning, Marlie McSweeney met her friend Carole Stoddard for brunch at the Chelsea Rose Cafe. They both had lemon crepes—which they had enjoyed many times there before. This was the last lemon crepe, though, for Marlie.”

Nigel made an entry in his notebook: Good tactic to reduce the meaning of life to a single dessert? A bit overdramatic for a lemon crepe? What if the jurors don't like French pastries?

“Carole will testify to what her friend Marlie told her over the lemon crepes and tea. About the state of their marriage.”

Hearsay, thought Nigel. You won't get it in.

“And she will testify to what Marlie showed her before they left the café that morning.”

Fair enough. That much you might get in. Second-hand show-and-tell won't work. But second-hand show by itself might, if all you want is what the witness saw with her own eyes.

“Later that afternoon, Marlie McSweeney went to the Sainsbury's grocery on Kings Road. She bought red potatoes, and reduced-calorie butter, and paper towels, and soap, and other sundries, just as you and I would, and…”

Nigel sighed—but only inwardly and silently—and he made another note: Right, you're humanizing the victim. But grocery lists are boring. And you still haven't told us
why
the defendant was in a jealous rage.

Slattery stopped in midsentence—turned away from the jury—thought about it for a moment—and then turned to the judge. “Really, my lord, I must object!”

The judge looked surprised. He motioned Slattery to come forward to the bench, and then whispered, “Object to what, Mr. Slattery? You are the only one who has been speaking.”

“One of the alternate jurors is making notes about my opening statement!”

The judge puzzled over that for a moment. He looked toward the jury.

In the jury section, Nigel and all the others could see that a conversation was taking place, but they could not make out what was being said.

Perhaps this is some sort of strategic pause by the prosecutor, thought Nigel. A feint, before he thrusts home with the motive.

Nigel made a note of that.

The judge gave a quick, hard glance in Nigel's direction, and then he motioned the defense barrister to come to the bench and join the prosecutor. When Slattery and Langdon were both in place, the judge kept his voice low and said, “This is in fact the reason we give notebooks to jurors, is it not? So that they can take notes about the case for their eventual deliberations?”

“Yes, my lord,” said the prosecutor, “but alternate juror number five is not so much taking notes about the case as he is making criticisms on my handling of it!”

“How do you know this, Mr. Slattery?”

“I can tell by his facial expressions.”

“That's quite some ability my learned friend has,” said Langdon, the defense barrister, with some amusement, “to read jurors' minds from their expressions like that.”

“You won't like it if he does it when you're up,” responded Slattery.

“Enough,” said the judge. “Whether he's making such notes or not is moot, for two reasons. First, we all know that jurors talk about all of us—prosecution, defense, and judge—quite apart from the case itself. They shouldn't do it, we don't want them to do it, it's irrelevant to the case and to justice—but they do it anyway. We can only pray that they set all that aside when it comes to deliberations. And secondly—well, quite frankly, I'm pleased when I learn that jurors have taken a note or two, though not so many that they forget to listen and think. We know that many of them use their notebooks simply for doodling. I've heard of instances of jurors filling their notebooks with nothing but sketches of male and female naughty bits. Fortunately, the only time anyone looks at those—the notebooks, I mean—is when there is an allegation of some form of juror misconduct. There is no such allegation here, is there?”

“No,” said the prosecutor.

“Of course not,” said the defense.

“Let's resume, then, shall we?”

“Thank you, my lord,” said Slattery, loud enough for the jury to hear, so that they might think he had won the point, though he had lost it. “I have only one more thing to say.”

He approached the jury. “Why was the defendant in a jealous rage? Why would a man in a marriage such as his, where his own philandering was winked at—”

I'd object to that, thought Nigel.

The defense did. “Objection, my lord,” said Langdon. “The defendant is not on trial for infidelity and this is simple character assassination.”

“Sustained. For the moment.”

“I apologize, my lord,” said Slattery quickly, having surely expected the objection. Then he turned to the jury and began again.

The defense barrister did not watch the prosecutor during this. Langdon pretended an interest in the alignment of his own wig, and the condition of his own fingernails, or any body part he was willing to focus on in public.

You're not fooling anyone, thought Nigel. You're listening as though your career depends on it.

“Why was the defendant in a jealous rage, you ask?” said Slattery again. “Simple. Because he had learned that his wife had done, in her own way, in her own consistent, hopeful, and needful way, what he had done to her repeatedly, thoughtlessly, and arrogantly for the length of their marriage. She had been untrue. She had taken a lover.”

Langdon was now listening so intently while pretending not to that he accidentally created a hangnail on his left hand.

“Who was this lover, you might ask. My learned friend opposing counsel will most certainly ask—you can see that he is waiting anxiously right now to see if we will promise more than we can deliver. The defense knows what we know—which is that, despite all our best efforts, we have not been able to identify the lover to whom Marlie McSweeney wrote her letters. That is true. But I submit to you that the identity of the lover does not matter. All that matters is that there was a mechanism by which Liam McSweeney learned of that lover's existence. And that we will show.”

Slattery paused for a deep and (he hoped) profound sigh, and then he continued.

“Liam McSweeney heard rumors of an affair, heard rumors of letters—and believed that his wife had found someone who fulfilled all her needs in ways that he himself did not even try to do, and he murdered her out of the most ancient of motives … out of jealousy. Selfish … grasping … jealousy.”

Slattery stopped, nodded to the judge slightly to show that he was done, and then stood very still.

Nigel looked toward the defense barrister. Langdon was no longer looking at his fingernails. The man's wall of feigned indifference had been broken. He was not happy. The inability of the prosecution to identify any individual alleged to be Marlie McSweeney's lover was a major hole in the theory that Liam McSweeney had killed her in a jealous rage. But now Slattery had inoculated the jury against that flaw. True, the prosecution didn't have the identity of the lover. But they didn't need it. All they had to show was that Liam McSweeney learned of an affair. And for that, they had the letters.

Might have done it only a little better myself, thought Nigel.

The prosecution had completed its opening statement; there would not be a defense opening statement—it was an English trial, and the prosecution would simply begin to present its case, and the defense would begin to poke new holes in it. Or try to.

So much more fun to be the defense, thought Nigel. Provided that you think your client might be innocent—and that if you do believe it, you win it.

“Are you ready with your first witness?” said the judge to the prosecution.

“We certainly are, my lord,” said Slattery.

The judge looked at the wall clock. “Given the hour, do you want to proceed now, or break for lunch first?”

You should let us break now, thought Nigel. We'll go to lunch with your statement fresh in our minds. But if you just charge ahead and we get to the canteen late, we'll blame it on you.

“I know the jury must be very hungry,” said Slattery, “and I hear there's an excellent pasta today. I'm happy to wait until after lunch.”

“We'll break then,” said the judge. “But I suggest you not make promises about the canteen pasta.”

The judge was about to rise—but a hand shot up from the alternates section. And when no one acknowledged it immediately, the hand waved back and forth as eagerly as if hailing a cab.

Everyone looked.

It was the tall alternate juror.

Ms. Sreenivasan, expecting some sort of personal emergency, quickly went to him and whispered, “Yes?”

“I have several questions for the prosecution,” said the tall man, not whispering. “First, do the McSweeneys employ a housekeeping service? And secondly, regarding fingerprints—”

“Jurors do not ask questions during opening statements,” said the judge, quickly and sternly.

“But several salient points have been overlooked.”

“It is not up to you,” said the judge quickly, “to try to improve upon the prosecution's opening statement. Further, remember that the statement is not evidence itself, but merely a preview of what the prosecution hopes to show. When testimony is presented, you will have the opportunity to submit, in writing, specific questions for specific witnesses, subject to my approval.”

“Oh.”

“Is that clear?”

“Yes. But just one thing—are we to apply the general principle that when the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

The judge drummed his fingers on the bench, like someone doing a five-finger piano sequence, and stared hard and suspiciously at the tall juror.

“What you just stated is not a principle of law,” said the judge. “I will give you the applicable law, and the criteria by which you must apply it, at the end of the trial, before the jury begins deliberations—assuming we come to that. In the meantime, your job is to simply pay attention to the evidence presented to you. Jurors do not make remarks upon the case in open court. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you so very much.”

Now the judge turned to the rest of the jury. “I think this is a good time to take a break. Remember all my admonitions. Do not discuss this case with anyone. Not the general public. Not your family members. And above all not the press. Some of you may feel an impulse as you walk into the corridor to whip out your mobile phones and call your BFFs, or whatever the term is that my granddaughter uses, and tell them what case you are on. Do not do so. Don't make me take your phones away. You may say that you are on a jury, but you are forbidden to say which one. You may say what time you expect to be home for supper, but you may not talk about this case when you get there. Remember that you are an anonymous jury, and we intend to keep it that way. The alternative would be sequestration, and I'm sure no one wants that.”

He paused now, trying to look sternly at all the jurors at once.

“Is that clear? If it is not, now is the time to speak.”

No one spoke. The judge waited until he saw two or three affirmative nods. “Very well, then. Please return to the corridor no later than five minutes before the hour; you will wait there for Ms. Sreenivasan to call you in. Court will resume promptly at two p.m. Not ten minutes past. Not five minutes past. Two p.m. promptly. Do not inconvenience this court and your fellow jurors by being late. Thank you. We will now go on break. The canteen service queue shuts down at half past one. Proceed accordingly.”

 

7

The McSweeney courtroom was not the only one breaking for lunch. Most of the others were as well, and experienced jurors from all the courtrooms, knowing the gravity of their situation, were rushing madly to get to the canteen before it could close and leave them nothing to eat but machine-vended Mars bars.

The gleaming wood stairwell (just polished the night before, the Crown Court maintenance division wanting its best foot forward for such a celebrated trial) that descended from the courtroom level to the canteen was normally wide enough to accommodate any traffic it might receive.

Not today, with so many courts in session and so many famished jurors in a desperate hurry. They did not actually run down the stairs (being English, after all), or at least they pretended not to—but Nigel noticed most of them trying to proceed at an abnormally fast walk. There were more than a few jostles and apologies, and even a few non-apologies, by the time they reached the relative safety of the lower floor.

When Nigel finally reached the food queue itself, it was already more than fifty jurors deep. Nigel sighed, took his place in line, and told his stomach to stop growling. The queue grew longer, and the corridor more crowded, with jurors and others trying to hustle through in both directions. At one point the entire line had to shift left, flat up against the corridor wall, as two officials, one of them carrying a first-aid kit, pushed their way through, heading in the direction of the courtroom stairwell. The crowd was much too thick to see what the issue was.

In the meantime, the line continued to inch forward. In ten more minutes, Nigel finally got close enough to pick up his food tray, and someone put a hand on his arm. Nigel turned. It was the woman with the tattoo.

“I'm Lucy. Will you sit at a table with me and shield me from one of the other jurors?”