The Evangeline (11 page)

‘Yes, your Honour,’ said Darnell, the smile stretching further across his face. ‘Crystal clear.’

‘Good.’ Maitland looked at Roberts. ‘You may continue. But, please, Mr Roberts—ask a question.’

Roberts moved to within an arm’s length of the witness. ‘You said the boy was chosen—chosen to die.Who made that decision?’

Trevelyn pointed at Marlowe.‘Him. He did. It was his decision.’

Grim-faced, impassive, Marlowe had been staring straight ahead. At Trevelyn’s answer, his eyes flashed open and his head turned sharply. He seemed to be challenging him to repeat it. Trevelyn lowered his eyes and sank back in the witness chair.

‘Mr Trevelyn?’

Trevelyn looked up, his eyes hostile and suspicious. He cast a defiant glance at Marlowe to show that he had not been defeated, but Marlowe had already looked away.

‘It was his decision,’ repeated Trevelyn. ‘His decision how the decision should be made.’

‘Explain that, please,’ said Roberts quickly.

‘We had been out there ten days, two weeks … I don’t know for sure. That last ship passed us, and—what was his name? Wilson?—went in after it. We knew it was all over. We were thousands of miles from land. We could catch a little water—not much, a few drops—but we were out of food.’

‘You had a hook and line—you could catch fish. Isn’t that what you said?’

‘We did, for a while; but it wasn’t much good and then we lost even that. Someone was supposed to watch it, have their hand on it all the time, but in one of the storms…’

‘Mr Trevelyn?’

‘Sorry,’ said Trevelyn, coming back to himself. ‘What was the question? Yes, I remember,’ he said, forcing himself to sit straight. ‘We were out of food, and there were eleven of us left.We…’

‘Eleven?’ asked Roberts. ‘There were fourteen, then Wilson drowned…’

Trevelyn shrugged. ‘Ten days, two weeks—things happened. You would nod off—crowded like we were—wake up an hour later and someone next to you might be gone. Fell in, or went of their own accord rather than face another day of it, I couldn’t say. After that ship we saw, after what we saw Wilson do, it was like I said: we were all dead, the only question how we wanted to die.’

Pausing, Trevelyn looked around the courtroom, a hard shrewdness in his hollow eyes.‘It isn’t like going hungry for a few days, knowing at the end of it you’ll be all nice and safe with lots to eat. After a while you start to feel your body start eating itself. We would have died out there, if we hadn’t done what we did. It wasn’t what they did was wrong, but the way they did it. None of it was fair.’

‘Before you tell us what you think was or was not fair,’ Roberts interjected, unable to hide a certain irritation,‘tell us first what was done.’

Trevelyn turned away from the courtroom crowd, scowling at the interruption.

‘What was done? I’ll tell you what was done! There were ten of us left—’

‘Ten?’ cried Roberts in frustration. ‘You just said there were eleven!’

‘Did I call the witness, your Honour?’ asked Darnell, perplexed.‘ Because if I did, when the prosecution is finished with its cross-examination, I should like to have the chance to ask a few questions on redirect.’

Roberts had lost all patience with the courtroom theatrics of the legendary William Darnell. He waved off the remark. ‘Ten, eleven—which is it?’ he demanded.

‘Ten, eleven—how would I know?’ Trevelyn fired back. ‘I was as good as dead; so were all the others.What difference did it make who was left? Another day, maybe two, and we all would have died!’

Trevelyn’s eyes moved down to the foot that was no longer there. A scornful look passed over his face. ‘Might have been better if we had,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘Tell us what was done,’ repeated Roberts with stern insistence.

Trevelyn raised his eyes, but this time he looked at Roberts without animosity. ‘The boy was dying. There was no mistake about that. He might have lasted a few more days, but that was all. And those few days—none of us would have lasted any longer. That’s when Marlowe decided. That’s when he decided the boy had to die, and that it could not wait. And that’s what Marlowe did. He took his knife—the boy was still alive—and he got behind him, held his hand across his mouth, and tore open his shirt. He plunged the knife straight into his heart. That’s how he killed him.’

‘Stabbed him in the heart! Why?’

‘Why? I’ll tell you why. So the others—some of the others— could drink the boy’s blood, that’s why! It was nourishment, that’s what Marlowe said. It would keep you alive, that’s what he said. And you had to do it that way, while the heart was still beating, because if you waited, if you waited until it stopped, if you tried to do it after someone was dead, the blood coagulated, dried up. It would be useless then. We had to do it—that’s what Marlowe said.We had to drink it, or we would die.’

‘
We
had to do it?’ said Roberts sharply. ‘You also…?’

‘I was out of my mind with hunger and thirst! But I hated myself for doing it. I swear that’s true!’

Roberts turned away, perhaps to hide his revulsion. He went to the counsel table and glanced through a file. ‘And then, I take it, the body of the boy was used as well?’ he asked, looking up.

‘Yes. The head was removed, and the feet and hands. The same way with all the others.’

A tremor ran through the courtroom, a great collective sigh of dismay and disapproval. Some of the jurors looked at Marlowe as if he had been revealed as something not quite human; others refused to look at him at all.

‘“All the others?” Do you mean to say that this is how the rest of them died? Ten, eleven—whatever the number left—there were only six survivors. First the boy, then the others? Four, maybe five people died this way?’ asked Roberts with a look of incredulity.‘All those other people died the same way? Stabbed in the heart while their hearts were still beating?’

‘No, one of them was stabbed in the throat.’ Trevelyn nodded towards Marlowe, sitting rigid in his chair. ‘He shoved the knife into her jugular while someone caught the blood that spurted out in one of the empty cans.’

‘
Her
jugular? The victim was a woman?’

‘The second one, after the boy.’

‘Was she sick as well? Did she also have only a few days left?’

‘That’s not so easy to answer. None of us had more than a few days left. We were all dying. The only question was whether we would all die together or one at a time so the ones left could live a little longer. There was one or two who said we shouldn’t do it, that it was better to die than live like that, but most didn’t see it that way. They wanted to live. Nothing else mattered. Not that it was ever put to a vote, or anything like that. Marlowe made all the decisions. He was in charge.’

‘Do you know who this woman was? Do you know her name?’

Hunched forward, Trevelyn raised his head. He looked at Roberts as if he was not sure he should answer.

‘The name, Mr Trevelyn.Who was she?’

Trevelyn’s closed mouth pulled back to the side as he bit his lip. Roberts kept staring at him, hard, unrelenting.

‘She was the famous one, the movie star—the wife of that fool DeSantos.’

The courtroom came alive. Heads turned, eyes met; puzzled faces confessed their ignorance and curiosity searched for answers. DeSantos was James DeSantos, the well-known actor. Until this moment everyone had presumed that his wife, the equally famous and infinitely desirable Helena Green, had vanished with the
Evangeline
. No one had ever suggested that she might have been in the same lifeboat with her husband.

‘Helena Green—she’s the woman to whom you refer?’ asked Roberts, ignoring the murmurs of the crowd which, with a glance of the utmost severity, Judge Maitland reduced to an impeccable silence.

‘Helena Green.Yes, she’s the one, the second one who died. The second one Marlowe killed.’

Roberts moved behind his chair at the counsel table. His hand tightened around the back of the wooden spindle chair. The colour drained from his face.

‘And you and the others—the ones who were left—that was how you lived? On the flesh and blood of Helena Green?’

There was a look of pure contempt in Aaron Trevelyn’s eyes, an expression of cruel vindictiveness against the cheap morality that could not ask the question but only dance around it.

‘Do you mean, did her husband live off her flesh and blood as well?’ Trevelyn’s eyes fairly glittered with the pride of evil. ‘Yes! And more than that, he insisted that, as she was his wife, he get her first!’

Roberts’s face turned completely ashen. In the tumultuous noise of the outraged courtroom, he gripped the chair with all his strength.

Maitland pounded his gavel as hard as he could. ‘This is a court of law!’ he thundered in that gravel-rough voice.‘Not some sideshow. You’re not here to express an opinion or give vent to your feelings. This courtroom will either be silent,’ he continued, as his voice grew quieter with the crowd,‘or, with the exception of those directly involved in the case, it will be empty.’

Maitland started to direct Roberts to ask his next question,then he changed his mind. Waving his index finger back and forth, he turned and cautioned the jury.‘It may be well to remind ourselves what is at issue here. The defendant, Vincent Marlowe, is on trial on a charge of murder. The defendant, by virtue of certain pre-trial motions made by his attorney, has joined to a plea of not guilty a notice of his intention to rely on what is called the defence of necessity. The issue, then, is not so much whether someone was killed, but whether, in a manner allowed by the law, that killing was necessary. Both Mr Roberts and Mr Darnell told you during their opening statements something about the circumstances—and, I would add, the extraordinary circumstances—in which this defence might be available. At the end of the trial, I will instruct you on the law of necessity and how you are to apply it to the facts of this case. I will tell you now that part of your task will be to decide what, under all the circumstances in which the defendant found himself, including the responsibility he owed others, were the choices he had—and whether what he did was the only thing a reasonable man could have done. It is no answer to say that it should not have been done, that no one should ever kill. The question—the only question—is whether he had any real choice. The question—the only question—is whether the choice he made was the lesser, or the greater, of two evils. Finally, as I instructed you at the very beginning, you are required by your oath to suspend all judgment until you have heard all the evidence. The law gives you no choice in this.’

From their solemn demeanour, it appeared that the jury understood everything Maitland said. They seemed relieved that the law would allow them to keep a certain distance from the raw, gruesome facts of death; grateful that they did not have to look too closely into
what
had been done, and only into
why
. They did not have to touch the leper, only determine the cause of his disease.

The rest of that day and all the next, Roberts led Aaron Trevelyn through the grim recitals of death and survival. At the end of it, despite all of Maitland’s cogent warnings, it would have taken a rare detachment not to believe that Vincent Marlowe, if not a born monster, had been a man gone mad, driven by hunger, thirst and fear to make a mockery of decency and raise serious questions whether, pushed to extremes, men were worse, far worse, than beasts.

When Darnell left the courtroom at the end of Trevelyn’s second day of testimony, he knew he had a long night’s work in front of him. He did not mind that. The work made him feel useful and alive.

It was nearly quarter to six, but Mrs Herbert, his secretary was still waiting for him.

‘He’s here,’ she said. ‘In your office.’

Darnell was annoyed that anyone should be in his office. ‘If someone wants to see me, they can make an appointment. No, they can’t,’ he said, immediately correcting himself. ‘I’m in a trial; I don’t have time…’

‘You’ve been trying to reach him for weeks.When he called a little after three and asked if he could see you, I thought—’

‘Who?’

‘Hugo Offenbach.’

‘Here?’ He turned and walked away, moving anxiously down the long corridor. He stood before the closed door to his own office, adjusting his tie. He knocked before he entered.

‘It’s a great pleasure to meet you finally, Mr Offenbach,’ he said as he shook hands with the famous violinist.‘I heard you play once.’

‘I did not know what would come out,’ explained Offenbach in a worried voice that struck Darnell as being at the same time profoundly courageous. ‘But after what Mr Trevelyn has said, I thought I had better come to see you.’

‘You were in court today?’ asked Darnell. With a gesture he invited the violinist to take the chair in front of his desk.

‘No,’ replied Offenbach. There was a look of hesitation in his eyes, and then he added, ‘I don’t go anywhere in public now. No, I read in the papers what he said yesterday. That’s why I’m here. I thought you might like to know the truth.’

They talked far into the night, and when Hugo Offenbach finally left his office, Darnell knew far more about what had happened to the unfortunate survivors of the
Evangeline
, and more about Vincent Marlowe, than through anything Marlowe had shared. He knew enough to make the cross-examination of Aaron Trevelyn a much more interesting prospect than it had seemed before. When he finally fell asleep, some time after two, he was already dreaming about the morning and what would happen when it came.