The Evangeline (15 page)

Darnell turned from the Golden Gate and the fog that was dancing away back to Summer Blaine and the smile that, when he saw it, made him feel suddenly self-conscious.

‘I’m always trying this case, aren’t I? That must have sounded like a summation.’

‘No,’ she said with a laugh. ‘But you can’t stop now. Tell me what you’ve decided.’

‘Decided?’

‘Everything you ever see in a trial makes a difference in what you do. If I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that. If the jury is enthralled with the story of what happened, if we’re all the voyeurs you think we are, you’re not just going to regret what we’ve become—you’re going to use it. How?’

He nodded with a kind of dutiful smile, as he often did when he heard her tell him what he really thought, and then teased her with his eyes.‘I have no idea,’ he admitted with a candour that was both abrupt and disarming. ‘No idea at all. I know a great deal more than when the trial started—mainly because of what Hugo Offenbach told me—but it isn’t enough. I’m still feeling my way, guessing at a lot of it.’

At the mention of Hugo Offenbach, Summer’s eyes flashed with curiosity. ‘What was he like … after everything that’s happened? Will he ever play again? The papers say he’s become a total recluse. He doesn’t go out anywhere; he doesn’t see anyone.’

‘Will he ever play again? In public? No, I don’t think so,’ said Darnell as he moved across the room to the chair where she sat waiting. He touched her forehead and felt better for the warmth. Then, driven by some restless urge, he began to walk around again.

‘Trevelyn has finished testifying. Now he’s going to get rich. Every publisher in New York wants his story: the cannibal with a clear conscience. A movie deal can’t be far away.’

‘A nation of voyeurs,’ said Summer Blaine, repeating Darnell’s earlier observation, agreeing with it.

‘Trevelyn feels the need to justify himself before the world. Offenbach knows he can’t. He may be the most remarkable man I’ve ever met,’ said Darnell, growing more intense.‘He’s grateful to Marlowe for saving his life, but he would have been more grateful had Marlowe left him for dead. He knows what Marlowe did and, more importantly, he understands why he did it. In his judgment, and it’s a judgment with which I cannot disagree, Marlowe is both tragic and heroic. He admires Marlowe’s strength of character, his will, his moral courage—all the things that made Marlowe think that whatever else he did, he had to save Offenbach’s life—but now Offenbach has to live with the shame of what he, Offenbach, did not want done.’

A look of irritation, directed not at Summer Blaine, but at himself, filled his eyes as he wandered aimlessly from one place to another until he suddenly stopped, looked straight at her and threw up his hands. ‘Life is full of splendid ironies, isn’t it? Marlowe and Offenbach, the only two who were willing to die, the only two Marlowe made certain would not be killed.Yes, what Trevelyn said is true. Marlowe was willing to let all the others die, willing to kill them himself, but not the two of them: Offenbach because he is a genius, Marlowe because he was the only one who could save the others. That is what is so remarkable, so extraordinary. Offenbach understands it, understands Marlowe’s motive, but how am I supposed to convince a jury that what Marlowe did was right? It’s easier to make the case that Marlowe had to live. No one else could control that boat; no one else knew what to do. Trevelyn, the only other member of the crew, had a broken wrist and was in constant pain. No, Marlowe had to live: without him none of the others stood a chance. But Hugo Offenbach? He was an old man compared to the rest of them, frail and in ill health. He had just had a heart attack; he might have died at any minute. Even if he had been in perfect health, even if he had been twenty years younger, why should his life be spared? Why should his name have been kept off the list of those who might die so the others might live? Because Hugo Offenbach is a genius, the greatest violinist in the world. That was Marlowe’s reason. It is the one thing he seems proud of, the only thing that brings some light into his eyes—that he saved Hugo Offenbach and what Offenbach does for the world.’

Darnell shook his head in wonder. ‘Poor Marlowe. All the world will see is a criminal failure to treat everyone the same, equally entitled to the same chance. Marlowe has lived his life at sea; he never suffered the disadvantages of a formal education. All he sees is the gift that Offenbach brings, a gift so rare that only a coward or a fool would fail to do whatever he had to do to save it. I’m afraid all the jury will see is someone who thinks that some lives are more important than others.’

‘Offenbach knows this?’ asked Summer Blaine when Darnell fell into a long silence.

At first he did not hear her as he thought about what seemed a hopeless dilemma. He noticed that the last wisps of fog had vanished from around the Golden Gate and that the sounds from the street below seemed sharper.

‘He knows this…?’ she repeated in a gentle reminder.

Darnell nodded slowly. ‘You can’t tell by looking at him, you won’t hear it in his voice—but Hugo Offenbach knows his life is over. He was revered by everyone, and now … he knows what they think. He’ll never play again—I’m sure of it. I suspect the last time any of us will see him in public is when he testifies at the trial. He’s determined to do that now, to tell the truth about what happened—to do what he can to save Marlowe’s life. It may be the only hope Marlowe has. I suppose I should say the only hope I have, because Marlowe doesn’t seem to care.’

Sitting down, Darnell began to talk about where they might go that evening for dinner. Aware that what he had said must sound depressing, he made an effort to break the mood, to bring things back to normal,but a few minutes later he was talking about it again. ‘What happened out there, what’s happened to all of them, but especially Marlowe and Offenbach; the way that after the
Evangeline
went down everything else that happened seemed almost foreordained; the sheer necessity by which each thing followed another; the way all of it has ruined their lives—only someone like Melville could describe it all.’

Summer Blaine twisted her thin, angular face to the side and asked with her eyes for an explanation.

‘When I started this case, I read everything I could get my hands on about shipwrecks and survivors and what they did to stay alive. The most intriguing story, and the one that offered the most interesting parallel, was the sinking of the
Essex
, a Nantucket whaler, sunk by a sperm whale in November of 1820. That was what Melville used, the idea of the ship sunk by a whale, when he wrote
Moby-Dick
. But he did not use the rest of it. Three of the whaleboats got away. One of them disappeared, but in the other two, bodies were eaten. Eight people had been killed, each of them chosen by a method similar to the one used by Marlowe and the others. Eight people killed and only two survivors. There is another parallel, more eerie than the first. The captain of the
Essex
offered to take the place of one of the victims, a boy, but the boy refused.’

Chapter Fourteen

I
N THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF ITS CASE THE prosecution had led with its strength, Aaron Trevelyn, the only survivor willing to talk. But whom would Michael Roberts call next? He could not call Marlowe—only Darnell could do that— and after what the defence had claimed about Hugo Offenbach during Trevelyn’s cross-examination, there did not seem much likelihood that Roberts would call him. There were only three other survivors, only three other eyewitnesses to what Marlowe had done: the actor, James DeSantos, whose face was known everywhere, and two women, whose names had only become famous because of the trial. Cynthia Grimes had disappeared, gone into hiding somewhere in Europe. No one had heard from her; no one knew exactly where she was. That left DeSantos and Wilcox.Which would Roberts call first?

If you have three witnesses, you put the weakest one in the middle because the things that come at the beginning and the end are what most people remember. Roberts had started with Trevelyn and the jury had hated him; there was a chance that the jury would not have any greater love for DeSantos. Better to call him next and then finish with a woman who, whatever you thought about her religious beliefs, seemed not to have forgotten what it meant to be civilised. Trevelyn, DeSantos, Wilcox—that was the order Darnell would have done it. But Roberts did something else: he called Samantha Wilcox. Darnell wondered what Roberts knew that he did not.

There was no doubt that Samantha Wilcox was a devout Catholic; she had been educated in some of the best Catholic schools in Europe.With a husband she seldom saw, and then only on occasions which can best be described as ceremonial, she let herself be loved by other men—but always with the knowledge that divorce was unthinkable. Darnell was intrigued by her, and somewhat disconcerted by his own reaction. The claim that angels had come to her rescue, an idea he would have dismissed as a crazed delusion had it been made by some redneck Southern Baptist, carried a certain persuasive charm when it came from the mouth of an intelligent, mainline Eastern Catholic.

Tall and elegant, her every movement graceful and at times almost artistic, Samantha Wilcox had the well-bred habit of pausing before each answer to make certain there was not something Roberts wanted to add to the question.

‘Could you tell us, Mrs Wilcox,’ asked Roberts delicately, ‘what you remember about the decision that was made— the decision that someone would have to die so that the others could live?’

Her voice was magical, a whispered breath that entered your mind like the memory of a lost romance, the girl you always wanted, the one you knew you could never have. For a moment Darnell had the uncanny feeling that he was looking at someone he used to know.

‘I remember that no one really wanted to, that it only happened when there seemed to be no other way.’

Samantha Wilcox looked at Roberts, her gaze steady, unwavering, unafraid of the truth.

‘Was everyone in favour of doing this, or did some of you oppose it?’

‘Some of us opposed it—that’s true.’

‘And what about you, Mrs Wilcox? How did you feel about this? Did you oppose it?’

A look of despair came into her eyes. With her right thumb she began in a slow, methodical way to rub the back of her other hand. ‘I was against it, yes.’

‘Could you tell us why? Wasn’t everyone near death from thirst and starvation? Did you think it better that all of you should die than that one of you be killed?’

A smile, rueful and forgiving, crossed her fine, straight mouth. She raised her chin.

‘I thought everything should be left in God’s hands.Whether we lived or died, whether we were rescued or abandoned to the sea—that was God’s decision. No, I didn’t think anyone should be killed; I didn’t think we should do anything that we shouldn’t.’

Roberts nodded sympathetically and moved quickly to the next question. ‘Did you, or did anyone except Vincent Marlowe, kill anyone?’

She seemed shocked by the suggestion.‘No, I couldn’t have … Did any of the others? No, I don’t think so, I…’

‘You don’t think so? Are you saying it’s possible that someone other than Vincent Marlowe killed some of the people whose bodies…?’

‘I didn’t see anyone—Mr Marlowe or anyone else—kill anybody. I couldn’t have watched a thing like that. I didn’t. You don’t know what it was like out there,’ she added with a shudder. ‘I could barely keep my eyes open; I could barely move my arms or my legs. All I could do was pray, and most of my prayers were that God would take me next.’ With a searing, anguished look, she added, ‘My first prayer, when it started, was that He take me first. But instead, He took the boy. To spare him any more fear and torment, I suppose.’

Roberts was confused.‘But the boy was killed because he was about to die anyway.’

‘No, Mr Roberts, the boy was killed because that’s the way it came out.’

‘The way it came out?’ asked Roberts, more confused than ever. She seemed surprised that he did not know. Then she understood that none of them knew, that no one sitting in that courtroom knew. Or almost no one. She looked at Marlowe. He had not forgotten the grim ritual they had gone through together.

‘I didn’t think we should do it; I didn’t believe we had the right to decide who should live and who should die. God, in His infinite wisdom, takes us when and how He pleases. We didn’t know what was going to happen next. There might be a ship just over the horizon, about to come into view. Mr Marlowe believed that, too. He kept telling us not to give up hope, that the worst thing we could do was stop believing that somehow we were all going to survive, that somehow someone would find us. He kept us alive, Mr Marlowe did. If it had not been for him, there would not be a trial, because all of us would be dead.’

‘But you were against it,’ Roberts quickly reminded her. ‘You did not think anyone had to be killed, or should be killed. No one could know when a ship might appear.’

She gave him a dark look. ‘But we know now, don’t we? We know that the ship that finally came, the ship that rescued us, wouldn’t have found anyone alive if…’ She stopped herself. ‘You asked about the boy. He was chosen in the same way as the others. I didn’t want it to happen—I told you that—but once it was decided, we had to let God choose who it would be. There were some who thought we should choose, that we should make that decision ourselves, but Mr Marlowe agreed that if it were going to be done, there was only one way to do it. It was done by lot, Mr Roberts, that was how it was decided, that was how that boy was chosen: we drew straws. I hoped—I prayed—that I would go first.’

‘So it was a drawing? A matter of chance who was selected, who the next victim would be? But then why would one of the other survivors say that the boy was chosen because he was sick and dying?’

‘Trevelyn?’ she said with contempt. ‘Is that who you mean? I imagine because he would like everyone to think that so long as the boy was going to die anyway, it was not really a killing, that it was not really a sin—when he’s the one who first suggested that some of us should die so the others could live.What he meant, of course, was that others should die so
he
could live. He told Mr Marlowe—I heard him say it—that the members of the crew had to stick together, that the passengers were expendable, that without the crew to handle the boat none of the passengers could survive anyway. Mr Marlowe would not hear of it.’