The Evangeline Read online

  ‘We had no agreement among us,’ said Marlowe. ‘None that was ever spoken.’

  Marlowe reached across his chest to tug the lapel of his thick tweed coat. He had been in Darnell’s office at least half a dozen times before, but each time, shortly after he settled into the chair on the other side of the lawyer’s desk, his eyes moved around the room and the same quiet smile broke the even line of his mouth.

  ‘Outside—where the others work—it’s bright as day, and at every desk there is a computer and everyone is busy all the time. But in here, it’s dark and quiet and I’ve never seen a machine. All I see are books, thousands of them, and here and there a picture, a photograph, nothing else.’

  Darnell nodded towards the wall.‘That one has been there since the day I started practice: my class photograph. We looked older than law school graduates look now. In part because we were— most of us had been in the service before we started. The other reason is that in those days we all wore suits. There were nearly two hundred in that class, and only five of them women. All of the women, and nearly all of the others, are now either retired or dead, a distinction without a difference, it always seemed to me.’

  Marlowe nodded in agreement. ‘I never could understand why anyone would want to stop what they did, just to sit around and watch the years slip by. I like this room. It’s like a ship: quiet, dark, out of the way.’

  ‘Out of the way?’

  ‘Of other people and what they do.’

  ‘Is that why you decided to spend your life at sea?’

  Marlowe rose from the chair and walked over to the bookshelves that, from the floor to the ceiling, covered every wall but that which faced the street below.‘I might have been a lawyer if I’d been any good at school. I like to read. It’s what I do when I’m on a ship at night and I don’t have the watch. It’s the way I spend most of the time I have in port—find the library and if I don’t know the language, try to learn it. I read whatever I can find that I think might improve my mind.’

  Marlowe picked at random one of the thick volumes of reported cases, the appellate opinions that interpret and decide the law. He held it in his large hands with the reverence of a serious reader, the respect owed to written words meant to last. ‘They didn’t think I could learn anything when I was a boy in school. I was always falling behind the others.’ Marlowe thumbed through a few more pages, intrigued by the division of the text into double columns.‘I could never get it into my head that you had to move on to the next thing before you had completely understood the thing on which you had started.’

  He closed the book and carefully put it back in place. ‘Time is the trouble—always is. Everyone else was studying the next bunch of problems, while I was still trying to understand why I had gotten a couple wrong on the math test we had had the week before. In the sixth grade, I got tired of it and quit.’

  William Darnell gazed out the window. A shaft of sunlight cut through the thick morning fog. From a few blocks away came the mournful racket of a cable car, tolling its bell, as it jolted its way up California Street to Nob Hill. He thought about how Marlowe always had a book in his hand, or stuffed in his pocket, and that he read Pushkin and Dostoyevsky in Russian. And Marlowe had not even finished the sixth grade.

  ‘How did you come to leave school so early? Why did your parents allow it?’

  Marlowe went to a second window that looked down on Montgomery Street. It was a few minutes before eight. The morning traffic was a bedlam of muffled noise and light.

  ‘My father was a boilermaker. Worked in the shipyards in Seattle. He used to take me with him, days when he worked on some freighter. They came from every place imaginable and there was always someone on board who liked to tell stories to a boy. It fed my imagination—not just the stories, but the strange dialects, and even stranger looks, with which they told them. My father died in an explosion; left my mother with nothing but a small widow’s pension and two children to raise.’

  For a long time Marlowe stared down at the floor. When he finally raised his eyes he met the waiting gaze of Darnell. ‘I was twelve, but big for my age. There were always freighters coming in and out. My father had worked on a lot of them. There was a ship from Singapore; the captain had known my father, took me on as a cabin boy.Was the best thing that could have happened to me: got me out of school and all its useless drudgery. The sea became my education.’ Marlowe gestured towards the book-lined shelves. ‘And this was yours? Reading all those cases, decisions made by the courts?’

  A smile, close to nostalgia and not far from regret, slipped across William Darnell’s soft, almost feminine mouth. At the beginning, and for a long time after that, he had read them all. Now everything was on a computer, as Marlowe had remarked, easy to access if you knew what you were looking for and why. For his part, however, William Darnell did not think he had lost anything by being forced to carry his library around in his head.

  ‘And every case adds something new,’ he said, nodding to the empty chair so Marlowe would sit down. ‘Now tell me what you can about Trevelyn.You have to do at least this much.You haven’t told me anything about what happened…’

  ‘I’ve told you that I’ll testify and that I’ll tell the truth,’ Marlowe objected.

  Darnell leaned against the arm of his chair. He studied Marlowe intently. ‘You’ll tell the truth at trial, but you won’t tell the truth to me. That is a very strange way of proceeding, one without precedent in my experience. I never represent anyone who doesn’t tell me everything I need to know.’ But he was doing it this time, even though Marlowe’s refusal had been made plain at the beginning. ‘I assumed it was the condition you were in at the time, the shock of what you had been through, and that when you were back on your feet, fully recovered … I didn’t press you for details at the beginning, because I didn’t need them then.Your sister told me you would not hold anything back, that you always tell the truth. Can’t you trust me when I tell you that I’m only trying to do what is best for you?’

  ‘But I do trust you. I knew you were a decent man the first time I sat in this chair and looked you straight in the eye. And I have told you the truth. I told you that it wasn’t my idea to hire you, to hire anyone. My sister wanted that. She is the one who hired you; she’s the one paying your fee. I didn’t want a lawyer because I don’t need one. I did what they say I did: I’m guilty, plain and simple. I killed. I did it for a reason, but no reason can bring a dead man back. I’m guilty and the trial will prove it.Whatever the others say, I’ll still say I’m guilty, because it’s the truth—and the truth, or some part of it, has to be said. Don’t you think we owe that much to the dead—to tell the world why they died?’

  ‘And will Aaron Trevelyn tell the truth as well?’ asked Darnell with a glance full of meaning. ‘Is that why, of the six of you, he’s the only one who has said anything? Because he thinks he’s guilty, but could not wait for the trial to tell it to the world?’

  Darnell bent forward, the look in his eye withering in its implications. ‘There were only two of you—two members of the crew—who survived in that lifeboat.You’re charged with murder; Trevelyn isn’t charged with anything. Wasn’t he just as much responsible for what was done out there as you? Perhaps even, from what I’ve heard, more? Isn’t he the one who first suggested…?’

  The same silence that met his every question met this one as well.

  ‘Trevelyn wasn’t in charge. The responsibility was not his,’ said Marlowe finally.

  There was too much pride, and not enough regret; too much willingness to take everything on himself. Marlowe was bound to a tragic sense of life. He, and only he, had been selected by God or Chance or Fate to choose between the death of everyone or, at the price of murder, the survival of at least a few. That had been the most difficult thing for Darnell to grasp—that Marlowe was not ashamed of what he had done and that the only thing that would have shamed him would have been to evade the consequences of the choice he had made. It was no wonder Marl
owe preferred to live at sea among other men who had forgotten where they came from. His sense of honour was too rigid, too unforgiving, to live his life among the tolerant men and women of civilised nations.

  ‘Trevelyn may not have been in charge,’ Darnell persisted, ‘but by suggesting, by not refusing, by taking part, he would in the eyes of the law be a co-conspirator, every bit as guilty of murder as you. Now, you must tell me: did he first suggest it? What happened out there? Won’t you tell me anything to help?’

  Silence.

  With an air of exasperation, Darnell threw up his hands.‘What happened when the Evangeline sank? No, what happened when she sailed? With all your experience, with everything you knew, why did you agree with Whitfield that it was enough to fix that one crack, that it wasn’t necessary to examine every welding seam in the hull?’

  Marlowe seemed stunned by the suggestion.

  ‘You didn’t know? You didn’t know about the crack in the hull, the one they found in the sea trials, the one they fixed?’ Darnell asked, certain now that he was right. ‘The people who built the Evangeline took her through her trials.You had only ever taken her out, for a few days at a time, in the Mediterranean. He didn’t tell you. And you’ve known Benjamin Whitfield for how many years?’

  ‘I first started sailing for him four years ago.’

  Darnell looked at him sharply. ‘That’s why it sank, or at least sank like that, went down that quickly in the storm—because under all that stress, the seams just came apart?’

  Marlowe nodded, then got up and began to pace around the room. ‘I don’t know why he didn’t get the rest of the seams checked, except the reason he gave in court: that he was told it wasn’t necessary and that there wasn’t time—not if she was going to set out on schedule.’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain why he didn’t tell you about the problem, does it?’ said Darnell, giving him an odd look.

  Marlowe shrugged it off.‘I worked for him from time to time, sailed his boats different places in the world. He isn’t the kind of man spends time talking to ones like me. He only tells people what he thinks they have to know. He’s always busy—too many other things he has to do. He was that way with everyone. I never had the feeling he had any real friends, just people he wanted to be around. The girl may have been different, though. She seemed to think so, the way she acted when he said he wasn’t going to be able to go.’

  Darnell threw him a puzzled glance. ‘The way she acted…?

  ‘She seemed more upset about it than the others did. They had quite an argument about it.’

  Darnell tapped his fingers together slowly, a shrewd expression stealing across his mouth.

  ‘Trevelyn,’ he said, suddenly alert. ‘What is he going to say?’

  Before Marlowe could answer, Darnell sprang from his chair. With his hands clasped behind his back he took three quick steps towards the far window and then turned back.

  ‘There were fourteen people—fourteen! Did they all…? Never mind,’ he said.‘Whatever happened it will all come out—though in God knows how many versions. But if you won’t talk about what happened, about what you had to do to save the others—because for some reason that makes no sense to me you’ll only talk about it at the trial—you can still tell me what happened when the Evangeline went down. She had plenty of lifeboats on her—the Zodiacs and the other inflatable rafts—but only one got away?’

  ‘No,’ replied Marlowe without expression. ‘Two got free.’

  His mouth half open, Darnell stared at Marlowe. ‘Two got away? What happened to the other one? There were fourteen people in your boat. How many in the second one? What happened to them?’

  Chapter Nine

  WITH HIS JAW SET TIGHT AND HIS EYES FOCUSED straight ahead, Homer Maitland moved a little more quickly to the bench than he normally did. He was not trying to make up for time lost—the minute hand on the clock was snapping into place as he entered the courtroom—but to get a start on what was certain to be a long day. He had presided over enough trials to know when the prosecution had finished with the preliminary witnesses and was about to enter the most crucial part of its case.

  ‘Bring in the jury,’ he said with a cursory nod towards the bailiff.

  While the jurors took their places in the jury box, Maitland studied the witness lists in the court file. ‘You may call your next witness,’ he said, raising his eyes to the well of the courtroom below him where Michael Roberts sat waiting on the edge of his chair.

  ‘The People call Aaron Trevelyn,’ announced Roberts, as he got to his feet.

  It was difficult not to feel sorry for Aaron Trevelyn as he hobbled into court on a pair of wooden crutches. The right leg of his pants hung in an empty knot where his right foot had been. He was not yet used to the limits of his condition.When he raised his right hand to take the oath, the crutch on that side fell free. With a stricken, mortified look, Trevelyn waited while the clerk knelt down and picked it up.

  With hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, Trevelyn, though only thirty-eight years old, had the look of a man whose time was running out. He lowered himself onto the witness chair and set the crutches aside.With a strange, fearful smile he glanced around the courtroom. The crowd was staring at him with an intense fascination, driven by a plainly morbid curiosity. He looked away, but he could not help himself; he looked again, fascinated by the way they looked at him.

  Slowly, each word spoken with precision, Roberts asked the questions needed to establish the identity and background of the witness. He then began to ask a series of questions designed to remove any sympathy that the jury might to this point have felt for Vincent Marlowe and what he had done.

  ‘Would you please tell the jury how you happened to be employed as a member of the crew of the Evangeline?’

  ‘It was an accident; it was nothing planned.’ Trevelyn flushed at the unexpectedly high-pitched sound of his voice. Embarrassed, he stared miserably at his hands. ‘Nothing planned,’ he repeated as he shifted uneasily in the chair.

  Roberts stood at the end of the jury box, his hand resting on the rail, waiting for Trevelyn to go on. But all Trevelyn did was change position again. He spread his legs apart, the right one dangling free.With his elbows on the curved wooden arms of the brown leather chair, he bent forward, eyeing Roberts with nervous suspicion.

  ‘Nothing planned,’ said Roberts with a pensive smile as he advanced towards the witness. ‘I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean. The question was how you happened to become a member of the crew.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Trevelyn, repeating himself with mechanical insistence. ‘A mistake.’

  Darnell leaned forward, anxious to hear. Marlowe stared straight ahead, his expression unchanged.

  ‘A mistake?’ asked Roberts. ‘I’m afraid you have me really lost now—and, I imagine, the jury as well.’ Roberts searched his eyes. ‘I know this is difficult,Mr Trevelyn,but it will be much easier if you simply answer the questions you’re asked. Now, again, would you please describe to the jury the circumstances that led you to become a member of the crew of the Evangeline? Start this way: Were you hired by Benjamin Whitfield, the owner, or by Vincent Marlowe?’

  ‘Marlowe brought me on, day before we sailed.’

  ‘Just the day before?’

  ‘He was shorthanded. Someone who was supposed to go couldn’t, or had a change of heart—a premonition maybe…’

  ‘You had not sailed with Mr Marlowe before?’

  ‘No, never. Had not even met him. But I had sailed a lot in the Mediterranean. I heard they were looking for someone for a trip around Africa, and I was ready for something different. And when I saw the Evangeline it was not hard to decide. I had been on a lot of different vessels—some of the biggest yachts in the world. But the Evangeline! I’d never seen anything like her. She looked like she could fly.’

  ‘Was this, then, the first time you had sailed out of the Mediterranean and down the coast of Africa?’

  ‘Yes,
and I wish to God I’d never gone! I should have stuck with what I knew.’

  Roberts shoved his hands into his pockets and began to pace back and forth, two steps one way, two steps the other. He waited until Trevelyn’s emotion had begun to subside.

  ‘“She looked like she could fly.” But she didn’t, did she? She sank. What can you tell us about that, about the storm and how she went down?’

  ‘I thought I had been in weather before,’ said Trevelyn with a shudder. ‘Weather? I hadn’t seen anything. It was like you know what rain is and then you see a typhoon; or you once felt a tremor, a slight shifting of the ground, and then a real earthquake comes and levels a city.Weather? That storm wasn’t weather; that storm was pure evil, the end of the world. It was the day of judgment; it was hell. The winds so loud you thought you would go deaf; the seas so high you thought you were buried.’

  His eyes grew distant, remembering with a kind of stupefied wonder the start of the storm and his own dim refusal to believe that it could keep getting worse.‘It was what we expected, that’s what we told ourselves. We were in the south Atlantic; you expect some weather that time of year. And to tell the truth, we welcomed it, those first few days as the winds gathered and the swells became heavy.The Evangeline seemed to come alive,to breathe—the way she cut through it, the speed she had. The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky, that’s what it was like at first. Everything was smiles and laughter, people cheering when she broke through a wave and landed with a thump. Because, you see, it was perfect weather, blowing sun and wind. And you could almost taste it in the air, the sense that it was going to be like this,or even better,every day we were out.’