The Evangeline (7 page)

Summer parked the car and from the back seat retrieved two small bouquets. She gave one of them to Darnell. Holding hands, they walked up the path that led between the rows of headstones until they were at the very top of the cemetery.

‘A few minutes,’ she said.With a wistful glance, she let go of his hand and, while he headed in one direction, she went in the other.

When Summer Blaine reached her husband’s grave, she looked back over her shoulder, waiting until Darnell had gone the farther distance to where his wife lay buried. He did not turn around to look at her; he never did. She smiled to herself, then bent down and replaced the old flowers, withered with age, with the new.

She was waiting for him at the path when he returned. ‘Did you have a good visit?’ She took his arm and held it tight, afraid he might fall, as they moved down the narrow, uneven trail to the car. The scent of burning leaves floated in the air. The soft November sun left a burnished glow on her cheek.

‘I talk to her now in ways I never talked to her when she was alive. That’s the trouble with words, I think—they always get in the way. They never quite come out the way you want.When I come here it is not so much a conversation as a meditation, a sense that she shares whatever thought I have. It’s a kind of catharsis, I suppose; but it’s more than that: it’s the way she always makes me better than I am. Death does that, doesn’t it? It puts things in the right perspective, gives you a sense of what is important and what is not.’

Under the darkened shelter of an oak tree, they sat together on a wooden bench. Summer nestled close, keeping hold of his arm. ‘You were lucky to have her. There aren’t many men who married the first girl they ever loved. I don’t talk to Adam when I visit his grave; I didn’t talk much to him when he was alive. I suppose I come here because I was married to him and it doesn’t seem right he should just be forgotten.We were never any good together. That wasn’t his fault, it was mine. Sometimes I try to remember what things were like, in the beginning, before things got bad. The truth, though, is that if he had lived—if he hadn’t gotten sick—we would have divorced and I doubt I ever would have thought, or tried to think, about how things had been at the beginning. But he died instead, and I feel this responsibility. The dead go on living, don’t they? They’re alive in us.’

Darnell pulled his jacket close around his throat.

‘You’re cold.We’d better go.’

She drove him home and, while he sat at the kitchen table reviewing some material for the next week in trial, she made dinner.

‘Did I tell you that yesterday morning I delivered Olivia Ceballos’ baby? A girl, seven pounds, eight ounces.’

Darnell looked up, a blank expression on his face.

‘The second generation,’ she said, reminding him of what she had told him before.

Darnell’s eyes lit up.‘Of course! You delivered Olivia—twenty years ago.’

‘Yes, and her mother came, and afterwards we had a photograph taken: three generations and me.’

‘Twenty years from now, you can have another picture with four.’

‘And I suppose you think you’ll still be trying cases,’ she remarked as she brought their plates to the table.

‘I wonder what kind of world it will be then.’ Darnell lifted a glass of red wine to the level of his eyes, studying it with a strange fascination.‘On the surface, no doubt, even more artificial than this.’

‘Artificial?’

‘You see it every day,’ he said, as he put down the glass.‘What we all believe; that with all the new advances, all the things that science will soon be able to do, we will live longer, better, more productive lives. Every week in the papers I read how the normal life span will become a hundred and fifty years, maybe more. As if that were any great achievement; as if by some small delay death could be defeated! That is what has everyone so fascinated with this case. It shows how artificial we have made—or tried to make—the world. Feel bad? Take a pill. Have a problem? Suffered a loss? See a counsellor who can teach you how to cope. It is the narcotic of the modern age, a way to try to forget that we’re as much a part of nature as everything else that is born and dies. But out there, in that lifeboat—without food, without water —what good was all our modern science to them? What difference would it have made whether life expectancy was measured in terms of centuries instead of years to people who did not know if they would live another day? That is what has everyone on the edge of their seats: this knowledge that all the things we take for granted have made us forget what it really means to be alive!’

But Summer’s mind was on a question she was almost afraid to ask.‘What happened to the others? There were other lifeboats, weren’t there? There were twenty-seven people on the
Evangeline
. What happened to the other thirteen?’

A strange, distant look came into Darnell’s eyes. It was a look Summer Blaine had seen before, seen on the faces of her patients when she had to tell them they were dying and that there was nothing she could do. The look faded away, but it left behind a sense of something sombre, troubling and profound.

‘What happened in those first few minutes? What happened in that first hour? When that comes out, I’m afraid that no one will understand Marlowe then.’ He looked at Summer Blaine, a question in his eyes. ‘If there really is nothing more important than life, why is it that I feel so much more sorry for the living than I do for the dead?’

Chapter Seven

J
OSHUA STEINBERG DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE question.

‘The reason, Doctor; the reason why you found it necessary to hospitalise the survivors of the
Evangeline
?’ Bent over the counsel table, examining a medical report, Michael Roberts looked up.

Tall, thin, with the gaunt look of the long-distance runner, Dr Joshua Steinberg sat on the side of his hip, two long fingers stretched along the side of his jaw. He had dark, intelligent eyes and a fine, sensitive mouth. He had none of the arrogance of his profession.

‘There were different reasons for each; but if you want a statement that encapsulates their condition, I’d have to say the effects of exposure and exhaustion.’

‘They were hospitalised here, in the same hospital where you first examined them?’

‘That’s right. They were brought by ambulance from the airport, as soon as they arrived from Brazil. Benjamin—Mr Whitfield —made all the arrangements.’

‘Would you describe what, if any, medical attention they had received before you saw them?’ Roberts closed the file, but did not move from the counsel table. ‘I assume they had not been in a hospital.’

‘No, not in a hospital, but they had been given medical attention. A doctor in Rio de Janeiro examined them. He set— or, rather, reset—some of the broken bones. Some of them had been set originally when they were still in the lifeboat; the rest on the freighter that picked them up.’

‘The
White Rose
? Captain Balfour’s ship?’ said Roberts to make sure the jury understood. ‘Was there a doctor on board?’

‘No, apparently not. It was a freighter, not a passenger liner. Some of the crew had the kind of first-aid training you would expect, and they did have medical supplies. Captain Balfour did an admirable job with what he had. I don’t think there is any question but that at least two of the six survivors would have died within days if he had not taken care of them the way he did.’

‘Dr Steinberg, I’m going to read you a list of six names.Would you tell us, please, if these are the people you treated at the hospital?’

Nodding after each name, Steinberg agreed with the list.

Roberts then went back to the beginning and asked what had been the condition of each.‘James DeSantos—would you describe for the jury his physical condition at the time you examined him?’

Steinberg gestured towards the table. ‘May I refer to the records?’

Roberts brought him the document. Steinberg glanced at it a moment and then held it on his lap.

‘Broken ankle, three broken teeth. Suffered temporary blindness. He had severe ulceration.’

‘What about his mental condition, Dr Steinberg?’ asked Roberts, moving to a crucial element in the prosecution’s case. ‘Was he lucid? Was he, as we laymen might say, in his right mind?’

‘Yes, very much so. He was fully alert and in command of his senses.’

‘So he was not delusional? He knew where he was, what was happening to him, he could answer all your questions? In other words, Dr Steinberg, he was normal?’

Joshua Steinberg was not someone’s paid witness, brought in to give expert testimony for a fee. Roberts’s question posed a dilemma.

‘Normal?’ he mused aloud.‘No, I would not think to call him that; not after what he had been through. I understand your question,’ he said as Roberts started to ask the question a different way.‘Yes, he was lucid, rational; he could answer my questions; he knew where he was. But he was not right, and I doubt he or any of the others will ever be again.’

‘Yes, but my question is really much more narrow than that. What is important for us to know is whether he had suffered the kind of mental deterioration—whatever the cause—that would make it impossible for him to give an accurate account of what transpired between the time the
Evangeline
sank and the time they were rescued.Was he delusional, was he insane, is the question— and I take it from your answer that he was not. Is that a fair interpretation of what you said?’

‘During the time I examined him, during the time he was my patient in the hospital, I saw nothing to suggest that he lacked the capacity to think clearly.’

‘And what of the others?’ asked Roberts.‘Well, perhaps we’d better go through each one in turn. Let’s start with Hugo Offenbach.What can you tell us about him?’

Steinberg smiled to himself and shook his head. ‘I saw him play, here in San Francisco, ten years ago: the greatest violinist in the world.’

Everyone knew who Hugo Offenbach was. The fact that he had been saved, rescued from the sea, had been seen as a miracle— but then, as the rumours started, it seemed to intensify the shock. Normal people, driven to desperation, might do such things, but someone like him? No one wanted to believe it; there had to be some other explanation.

‘Mr Offenbach was in the best condition—and in the worst condition—of all.’

‘I’m afraid that is more of a riddle than I can solve.’

‘He had nothing broken; no injuries of that sort whatsoever. And though he was the oldest, he did not seem to have suffered quite so much as the others from exposure. Of course, he had lost a lot of weight; they were all barely skeletons. God knows what they looked like when they were first picked up. I have the sense, given Mr Offenbach’s age, that he was looked after by the others in a way they did not—or could not—look after anyone else. He could not possibly have survived what happened to him otherwise.’

‘And what was that, Dr Steinberg? What happened to Hugo Offenbach?’

‘He had a heart attack; a minor one, but bad enough. It happened during the storm, when they had to abandon the
Evangeline
. He felt the pain running down his arm. He lost consciousness. Someone must have carried him to the lifeboat; he certainly could not have reached it on his own.’

‘I assume that he was not delusional, or irrational, during the time you observed him?’

Dr Steinberg lifted his chin. His eyes seemed darker than before. ‘Hugo Offenbach may be the most rational man I have ever met.’

‘And what about Aaron Trevelyn? Other than his physical condition, did he suffer any mental impairment, anything that would make us doubt his ability to remember what happened or to render a clear account?’

Steinberg gave Roberts a look that bordered on incredulity.The physical condition of Aaron Trevelyn was the worst of all of them.

‘His wrist was broken, and he lost his foot.’

‘Frostbite?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. He’ll be crippled for life. I’m not really sure about his mental condition. He may have suffered some memory loss.’

Roberts had taken two steps towards the jury box. He looked back at the witness.

‘You’re not saying that Mr Trevelyn doesn’t remember what happened, are you?’

‘When I examined him, he seemed vague, confused—but whether it was because he could not remember or did not want to, I can’t really say.’

‘But you could say the same thing about the others, couldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be quite reasonable—given what they went through—to have a certain reluctance to talk about it?’

‘Yes, I suppose, but Mr Trevelyn…’

Roberts seemed in a hurry to move on.‘There were three other survivors—the defendant and two female passengers: Samantha Wilcox and Cynthia Grimes. Beyond what they suffered physically, did either of them exhibit any symptoms that would prevent them from recalling the events that transpired before their rescue at sea?’

‘I don’t think so, but I can’t be completely certain. Mrs Wilcox appeared to be a deeply religious woman, but how far that might affect her ability to perceive events, I’m in no position to say.With regard to the other woman, Cynthia Grimes, I can’t even tell you much about her physical condition. She left right after the ambulance brought her to the hospital.’

‘You never saw her?’

‘She refused treatment. She did not say why. She was not a patient, and we couldn’t hold her against her will.’

‘No further questions, your Honour,’ Roberts announced as he crossed in front of the jury on his way back to the counsel table.

Once he had taken his chair, Roberts clasped his hands under his chin, awaiting with more than usual interest the next move of the defence. Most lawyers were predictable, asking the same questions in the same ways, but you could never be quite certain what William Darnell would do on cross-examination. There were times when he did not cross-examine at all. He would just flap his hand in a petulant show of impatience, as if the witness had already wasted too much of the jury’s time. But this time Darnell shot to his feet. Then, as if he had suddenly changed his mind, he sat down again. Maitland started to turn towards Dr Steinberg to tell him he was excused. Darnell jumped up again.