“Oyez! Oyez!” the dark-robed little man cried, shortly after capturing the packed courtroom’s attention by beating his crown-tipped staff on the hardwood floor. “God save the King!”
And the assemblage was on its feet as a short, rather stout individual in shoulder-length white wig and furtrimmed scarlet gown took the bench. Sir Oscar Bedford Daly, Chief Justice of the Bahamas, was in his mid-sixties, though he didn’t look it: streaks of black eyebrow were the sole harsh element of a face as round and smooth as a child’s.
According to Higgs, Daly was fair-minded and incisive, with a reputation for cutting through red tape and red herrings alike to find the heart of the matter. Right now this pleasant-looking jurist was casting a rather be nign smile on the crowded courtroom.
And crowded it certainly was: cane chairs, camp stools and wooden folding chairs took every spare inch of floor space at the center and side aisles and back of the room. Again, the wealthy had sent servants hours ahead of time to get in line and hold seats for them. Nonetheless, about half of the faces here were black, belonging to native spectators who had no intention of giving up their seats for anybody.
The morning was hot, if not particularly humid, and the buzzing of flies could be heard over the churning ceiling fans. As the principals settled into place, and English justice took care of its formalities, the only major difference between this and the preliminary hearing was the jury box, all male, all white, merchants mostly. The foreman was a grocer.
Otherwise, all else was much the same-from the two teeming press tables, including Western-garbed Gardner, who sat forward like a hungry bulldog, to the robed, wigged lawyers: boyishly handsome Higgs sitting quietly confident, albeit with the addition of his second-chair counsel, W. E. Callender, a handsome mulatto with an ebullient manner and theatrical flair; charcoal-complected Adderley, a hulking presence surveying the courtroom as if he owned it, sitting next to the dour Attorney General, Hallinan, with his long, expressionless face and tiny twitching mustache.
And Freddie? He was sitting in his mahogany cage, chewing idly on his ever-present wooden match, his suit lightweight and blue, his tie bright as a Bahamas sun. The only indications of the toll all this had taken were his paleness and the fact that somehow the lanky Count had managed to lose weight.
For all his cheerful manner-grinning, winking at acquaintances-he looked damn near skeletal.
Adderley opened the Crown’s case with a lengthy and, frankly, powerful address to the court. He arranged the prosecution’s sorry jigsaw puzzle of circumstance into a picture of remarkable clarity, stressing Freddie’s “desperate financial condition,” and his “burning hatred” for Sir Harry.
“The details of this murder,” he said in his commanding, more British than British tones, “surpass by far any misdeed previously recorded in the annals of the history of crime in our fair land.”
Now his voice boomed.
“Murder is murder, and a life is a life,” he said, “but this murder is, as Shakespeare says, ‘as black as hell and as dark as night’ in its foul conception…a deed which could only originate in a depraved, strange and sadistic mind…a mind indeed which is foreign to the usual mind, with a complete disregard for humanity in so vile a murder which besmirched the name and peace of this tranquil land.”
Nice piece of shifty work, I thought, the way he emphasized the word “foreign.”
Adderley, hands clutching the front of his black robe, moved with a kind of lumbering grace, stalking the courtroom, intimidating the jury even as he wooed them. Beneath the eloquence and the so-very-proper accent was a latent brutality that gave the melodrama of his words credibility.
“Return a verdict of guilty,” he told the mesmerized jurors, “without fear or favor, knowing that you will be doing the thing which will satisfy your God…your conscience…and the demands of British justice!”
He sat, heavily, craning his neck, jutting his chin.
This stirring if pompous preamble was followed by a dull recital of familiar testimony from the RAF photographers and draftsman, and from Marjorie Bristol, who looked charming in her floral print dress with pearls, but seemed a little nervous.
On the other hand, she did grant me the briefest smile as she walked away from the witness box and up the aisle.
Over the lunch break, I sat in the B.C. dining room with Di and Nancy de Marigny-again, barred from the courtroom until her testimony-a procedure I would repeat over the coming days, reporting what I’d seen and giving my views.
“Adderley was good?” Nancy asked.
“Better than good. Even Erle Stanley Gardner was spellbound. I think it may have thrown Godfrey, a little.”
“He may have to lean on that boy Callender,” Di said. “I hear before he went into law, he was considering a stage career in London.”
Nancy was nodding. “Ernest was actually a newscaster with the BBC for a while. He’s got a fabulous personality-never at a loss for words….”
I’d spent enough time with Ernest Callender to know Nancy was right; but neither Higgs nor Callender was a match for Adderley’s showmanship.
“Christie should be up next,” I said.
Nancy smirked. “I wonder if he’ll make a better showing, this time around.”
“I wonder, too,” Di said, arching an eyebrow. “As good as Harold is with potential land buyers, you’d think he’d be able to sell a better bill of goods from the witness box….”
But Harold Christie’s showing, second time around, was if anything worse: he looked as if he hadn’t slept for weeks, his voice quavery and weak, requiring frequent requests from the bench for him to speak up as he gripped the rail, shifting in search of balance or comfort that would never come. If his double-breasted white linen suit with pearl buttons and his dark four-in-hand tie made him seem better groomed than usual, his flop sweat and fingering of that tie betrayed him as incredibly ill at ease.
He told his by-now-familiar tale of the murder night; he denied having been invited to de Marigny’s; nothing new.
But Adderley, knowing that Captain Sears would be testifying, did his best to deny the defense one of its bombshells.
“What would you say,” the prosecutor asked his witness, “if Captain Sears said he saw you out on the night of the murder?”
Christie’s knuckles were white at the railing as he summoned righteous indignation. “I would say he was seriously mistaken, and should in future be more careful of his observations.”
Adderley’s smile was wide and dazzlingly white; he nodded sagely, turned to the jury and played to them as he spoke to the bench: “My lord, that is all!”
This tactic from Adderley may have thrown Higgs somewhat, because at first his cross-examination of this uneasy witness seemed unsure. For example, he wasted five or ten minutes exploring which end of a towel Christie had used to wipe Sir Harry’s face, until Christie finally exploded with, “For heaven’s sake, Higgs, be reasonable!”
Yet Higgs pressed on, in an apparent attempt to convince the jury that Christie’s memory was unreliable. Fishing expeditions about why Christie had parked his station wagon in the country club lot that night, as well as whether or not the decision to stay at Westbourne was a spontaneous one, brought forth nothing. Nor did Higgs’ efforts pay off to underscore the absurdity of Christie’s claim that the stench of burning wasn’t present until he stepped into the murder room itself.
It was frustrating to see a sharp lawyer like Higgs do so little with an already off-balance witness.
Finally Higgs found his own footing.
“Mr. Christie, did you leave Westbourne at any time that night?”
“I did not.”
“Do you know Captain Sears, Superintendent of Police?”
“I do.”
“You are friendly with him?”
Christie shrugged. “I’m not friendly or unfriendly. I see very little of him.”
“Isn’t it true you’ve known each other since boyhood?”
Now he swallowed. “Yes.”
“He has no ill will against you, that you know of?”
“No.”
“I put it to you that Captain Sears saw you at about midnight in a station wagon in George Street!”
Christie swabbed his endless forehead with a soggy handkerchief. “Captain Sears is mistaken. I did not leave Westbourne after retiring, and any statement to the effect that I was in town that night is a very grave mistake.”
Higgs was pacing before the jury, now. “Would you say Captain Sears is a reputable person?”
“I would say so.” He swallowed again. “Nevertheless, reputable people can make mistakes.”
Higgs allowed the jury-in fact, the entire court room-to chew on the possible meanings of Christie’s last statement before saying, “I’ve finished with this witness, my lord.”
Over the rest of that day and extending throughout the next morning, Adderley continued to lay the foundation of his case. First came medical evidence from Dr. Quackenbush, much of which was centered on an unresolved discussion of whether or not Oakes was set afire alive or dead, based upon blister evidence. A little time-just a little-was given to the unsuccessful laboratory efforts to identify the “four ounces of thick and viscid” black liquid found in Sir Harry’s stomach.
The best moment came when the Chief Justice solemnly asked Dr. Quackenbush, “How long would it take for a normal, healthy person to die?”
And Quackenbush replied, “A normal, healthy person wouldn’t die, my lord.”
The tension in the courtroom disintegrated into much-needed laughter, over the cries of “Order! Order!” I found it a relief that the bland Quackenbush was finally living up to the Groucho Marx persona his name promised.
The afternoon of the second day found the pretty blond Dorothy Clark repeating the story of Freddie taking her, and the other RAF wife, Jean Ainslie, home in the rain; this innocent tale gave the Crown the element of opportunity it needed.
This testimony was hardly a surprise-and, had they called me, the prosecution could have got one Nathan Heller to back that up as well-but Higgs on cross took the opportunity to punch a major hole in the other side’s boat.
After establishing that Mrs. Clark had seen de Marigny burn himself lighting candles, helping explain the notorious singed hairs Barker and Melchen claimed to have found, Higgs asked, “Did you see the accused, Alfred de Marigny, taken upstairs at Westbourne for questioning the morning of July nine?”
“Yes I did.”
“I put it to you-was it between eleven a.m. and twelve noon?”
“Yes, I’m certain it was.”
The murmur that swept the courtroom was an indication of how damaging this testimony was. One of the prosecution’s own witnesses had now established that Freddie could have left his fingerprint on that Chinese screen by touching it on the 9th of July. At the same time, this witness called into doubt the reliability of sworn police testimony.
This moment of victory was followed by hours of attack, as a succession of prosecution witnesses painted a grimly unflattering portrait of Freddie.
Dr. William Sayad of Palm Beach told of the quarrel between Sir Harry and Freddie, in which Freddie had threatened to “bash Sir Harry’s head.” The smooth Southerner who had gotten me into this-Walter Foskett, the Oakes family attorney-detailed various family squabbles, making Freddie look as bad as possible.
Appearing as the absent Colonel Lindop’s surrogate, Major Pemberton-a proper, mustached figure with an air of authority-presented the police version of the investigation leading to de Marigny’s arrest-backing up the unavailable Lindop’s own deposition, which incidentally mentioned nothing about what time Freddie may or may not have been taken upstairs for questioning by Melchen on the 9th.
Lieutenant Johnny Douglas-a jaunty Scotsman with a hawklike profile, impeccable in his khaki uniform-had been assigned to stay with de Marigny, keeping him under informal guard, prior to the Count’s arrest. As he and Freddie were friends, the accused had apparently let his guard down, asking Douglas if a man could be convicted in a British court solely on circumstantial evidence, particularly if the murder weapon was not found.
In his rolling burr, Douglas also claimed Freddie had said of Oakes, “That old bastard should have been killed anyhow.”
Higgs handed the cross to his young second chair, Callender, oval-faced, handsome, slightly overweight but light on his feet as he asked Douglas, “You do understand the accused is a Frenchman, and that the French have different laws than the British?”
“I understand so.”
The Chief Justice sat forward and posed his own question. “Were you aware the accused came from Mauritius?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Callender smiled tightly. “And didn’t the accused ask whether the murder weapon had been found?”
“I believe he did.”
“Now, under the circumstances, wasn’t it a perfectly normal question for him to ask? If a man could be convicted without the weapon?”
“Not an unusual question, no, sir.”
“And did you not say to the accused, ‘They are making a fuss about Sir Harry because he has dough. If it had been some poor colored bastard in Grant’s Town, I would not have to work so hard’?”
“I don’t recall saying any such thing.”
“Don’t you frequently use the expression ‘bastard’?”
“I seldom ever use that word.”
Callender’s smile was gone; he thrust a finger at the dapper little Scotsman. “I put it to you, Lieutenant Douglas, that ‘bastard’ is a favorite term of yours!”
“I deny it.”
“And I further put it to you that you were the one who said, ‘That old bastard should have been killed anyway.’”
“I deny it. Those are the accused’s words.”
“That is all, my lord,” Callender said.
An effective piece of cross-examination-but Douglas was a solid witness. Freddie looked glum in his cage, his cockiness knocked out of him.
The following day began melodramatically, even for the Oakes case: Lady Oakes, allowed to sit in the witness box, in black silk dress with black veiled hat and black gloves, spoke softly, convincingly, of the strain placed upon their family by her daughter’s marriage to Count de Marigny.
She would cool herself with a palm fan, raise a glass of water to her lips with a trembling hand; it was a performance that garnered much sympathy. And, cynical though I may sound, it was a performance: this gaunt, teary-eyed, frail widow was not the strong woman I had met in Nancy’s room back at the Biltmore in Miami Beach.
Not to mention the iron-willed broad who had got me bounced out of the B.C.
Still, I thought of the parade of witnesses designed to make a devil out of Freddie, Eunice Oakes was the weakest. She just didn’t have anything to say: Freddie wrote a “horrible” letter, critical of Sir Harry, to their impressionable son Sydney; Freddie had apparently encouraged Nancy to break from her parents if they would not accept him “into the family circle.”
That was about it.
Higgs asked only six gentle questions by way of cross, including: “Lady Oakes, did you ever hear the accused make any threat of bodily injury to your husband?”
“Of course not,” she almost snapped.
That was the Lady Oakes I had met at the Biltmore!
“And to your knowledge,” Higgs was saying, “the accused’s only complaint was that you and Sir Harry had not accepted him into the family?”
“I assume so.”
“My lord, I have no further questions.”
The rest of that morning and afternoon, too, found the pride of the Miami Homicide Bureau, Captain Edward Melchen, standing in the witness box, fat, florid, fidgety. For several hours, Adderley led Melchen through a rehash of his preliminary hearing testimony, covering the investigation, the arrest of de Marigny, remarks about Sir Harry the accused had allegedly made.
Higgs handed the cross to his eager assistant, and Callender went for the throat almost immediately.
“Captain, what important piece of evidence did your associate James Barker reveal to Lady Oakes and Mrs. de Marigny, at Bar Harbor after Sir Harry’s funeral?”
Melchen licked his lips. “Captain Barker informed them that de Marigny’s fingerprint had been found on the Chinese screen.”
“A fingerprint?”
Melchen shrugged. “He might have said ‘fingerprints.’”
“Did you and Captain Barker travel together, from Nassau to Bar Harbor?”
Callender’s precise British-Bahamian diction somehow made Melchen’s Southern drawl seem lazy, even stupid.
“Of course we did.”
“Did you discuss the Oakes case?”
“Yes we did.”
“Did you discuss the discovery of this most vital piece of evidence?”
Melchen winced; he seemed confused.
“The fingerprint or fingerprints, Captain Melchen. Did you discuss them with your partner?”
Melchen tasted his tongue for a while; then said, “Ah…it never came up.”
“Sir?”
“We did not discuss them.”
The courtroom’s surprise was evident in the wave of muttering that passed over it, and so was the Chief Justice’s, as he looked up from the longhand notes he was taking.
Callender closed in. “You and Captain Barker had been called in on this case, and worked as partners?”
“Yes.”
“You had traveled all the way from Nassau together?”
“Yes.”
“And the first time you heard of this vital evidence, Captain Melchen, was when Captain Barker informed Lady Oakes and Nancy de Marigny of it?”
“Uh…yes.”
“Yet Captain Barker claims to have known about this evidence since the ninth of July, the day the accused was arrested. And now you stand here, swearing under oath that you traveled with Captain Barker from Nassau to Bar Harbor, during which time you discussed the case but Barker never once mentioned this important fact to you?”
“That, uh, is correct. Yes.”
Callender walked over to the jury and smiled and shook his head; behind him on the bench, Chief Justice Daly was asking Melchen, “Do you not now consider it strange, sir, that Captain Barker did not tell you about the fingerprint on your journey to Bar Harbor?”
“Well,” Melchen said lamely, with the wide-eyed expression of a child reporting to his teacher that his dog ate his homework, “now that I think of it…I do remember Captain Barker goin’ with Major Pemberton to the RAF laboratory to process a print they said was of the accused. On the ninth of July?”
The Chief Justice rolled his eyes and threw down his pencil in annoyance.
Callender took advantage of the moment and moved in for the kill.
“Then let us move to July nine, Captain. That is the day you and Captain Barker recommended the arrest of the accused?”
“Yes.”
Callender thrust an accusatory finger. “I put it to you, Captain Melchen, that your preliminary testimony, fixing the time of the accused’s questioning on July nine as between three and four p.m., was a fabrication designed to prove that the accused was not upstairs before the fingerprint was lifted!”
Melchen loosened his sweat-soaked collar; his smile was pained, strained. “That wasn’t my intention at all-my…my memory was at fault on that point. It was just a mistake.”
“Ah, and what a mistake!” Callender sneered. “And what a remarkable coincidence that you and two local constables should make the same mistake.”
Melchen smiled feebly, and shrugged.
“Nothing further, my lord,” Callender said disgustedly.
Next up was Barker himself, but the rugged-looking, lanky detective-with his direct blue eyes and dark graying-at-the-temples hair-was (unlike his partner) no easily rattled boob. He presented a professional, almost distinguished demeanor, standing casually, confidently, in the witness box, hands in the pockets of the trousers of his gray, double-breasted suit.
The Attorney General himself took the witness, and both the questions and the answers seemed too pat, too precise to me. Over-rehearsed. But the jury-despite the sorry shambling act presented by his partner, Melchen-seemed to be hanging on Barker’s every expert word.
Much of the afternoon was spent establishing Barker’s impressive-sounding credentials, and going back over the investigation of the crime and the arrest of the Count. Shortly after Hallinan guided Barker into a discussion of the fingerprint evidence, however, Higgs made a major play, objecting to the admission as evidence of the de Marigny fingerprint.
“This print is not the best evidence,” Higgs told the Chief Justice. “The screen with the print on it is.”
The Chief Justice nodded, his white wig swaying. “There should be no objection to that. Let’s have the screen itself brought in, then.”
Higgs smiled. “Ah, but my lord-there is no print on the screen now.
Now the Chief Justice frowned, irritation edging in on his confusion. “What more do you want than the raised print itself, and the photograph of it?”
“The print was not ‘raised,’ my lord, but rather lifted by a piece of rubber. And we only have Captain Barker’s word that the print came from that screen at all-this needless destruction of the evidence in its best state has not been satisfactorily explained, and the print should not be admitted into evidence.”
The Chief Justice’s expression was grave. “Do you mean to imply that the prosecution’s print is a forgery?”
“I do, sir.”
The stirring in the gallery was broken by the Attorney General rising to protest. Hallinan asserted the reliability and propriety of lifted fingerprints, explaining that Captain Barker, called to Nassau at short notice, had not brought a fingerprint camera, incorrectly assuming one would be available at the scene.
“Could you not have sent a telegram to your office,” the Chief Justice asked the witness, “and had your special camera arrive by the next plane?”
“I suppose I could have done that, your honor,” Barker admitted. “But I did not.”
It looked like Higgs had them, but the Chief Justice ruled that the fingerprint-Exhibit J-would be allowed in as evidence.
“Mr. Higgs, your argument speaks to the weight of the evidence, rather than its admissibility,” the Chief Justice said, “and I will so instruct the jurors.”
Court was dismissed for the day: it was a tie game at the half.
The following morning, Barker was back in the witness box, and Higgs sat rather placidly while Hallinan finished up with his presentation of the fingerprint evidence; his expert witness was vague about where exactly the de Marigny print had been lifted from the screen, which had been brought into court and stood to the left of the bench.
I wondered if Higgs would sic his pit bull, Callender, on this key witness. But Higgs rose from his chair and tackled Barker himself.
“You’re not prepared,” Higgs said in an astounded tone, even as he moved aggressively toward the witness box, “to say that the fingerprint came off the area marked in the second panel? You yourself marked it!”
“I’m certain the print came from the top portion of the panel I marked. Not necessarily the specific place marked.”
“Captain Barker, step down, would you, and walk to the screen and point out the area marked in blue pencil at the top of the panel.
Barker stepped down and moved smoothly past the Chief Justice and went to the Chinese screen. He studied the top panel, looking closely at the blue line which he’d previously indicated had been made by him.
“Your honor,” Barker said numbly, “the blue line on this screen wasn’t made by me. There’s been an effort to trace a blue line over the black line that I made myself on August first in the presence of the Attorney General.”
As the courtroom murmured, the Chief Justice came down from the bench, joined by Higgs and Hallinan, who stood with Barker examining the blue line.
“I see no black pencil line,” I heard Higgs say conversationally.
And Hallinan, in a whisper, said to Barker, “Look there, man-those are your initials….”
Court was called back to order, the Chief Justice took the bench again, and Barker, back in the witness box, did something remarkable.
“I–I wish to withdraw what I just said,” Barker almost stammered. “On closer examination I located my initials by the blue line.”
Higgs, moving restlessly up and down before the jury, was smiling. No great point of evidence had been made, but Barker’s confident demeanor was shattered: Higgs had him on the ropes, groggy.
“You consider yourself a fingerprint expert?”
“I certainly do.”
“Have you ever, in the many cases in which you’ve given expert testimony, introduced as evidence a lifted fingerprint without first photographing the actual impression of that print on the object in question?”
“Certainly-many times.”
“Name one.”
Barker paused. Gestured nervously. “I would need an opportunity to check my records….”
“I see. When you forgot your fingerprint camera, did you make any effort to get one here in Nassau? We understand the RAF has several.”
“Actually, no.”
“Did you wire Miami and send for one?”
“You know I didn’t.”
“When you dusted the bloody handprints in Sir Harry’s room, didn’t you know-fingerprint expert that you are-that they would be obliterated?”
“I knew it was a possibility.”
“Were they in fact obliterated?”
“Yes.”
“Well, did you at least measure these bloody handprints, to ascertain whether they came from a large hand or small?”
“I suppose I could have.”
“I put it to you that there were other prints on that Chinese screen, which were destroyed by the humidity.”
“That’s true.”
“If the accused was there that night, why weren’t his fingerprints similarly destroyed?”
“We got lucky, finding that one print.”
“Lucky? Is that the appropriate word? Perhaps you should say, ‘It was a miracle that we found it.’”
Melchen, seated in the courtroom, stood; his face was green and desperate. He rushed outside, pushing aside spectators seated on folding chairs in the aisle. At the press table, Gardner stood to look out the nearby window and started grinning. Faintly, despite the churn of fan blades overhead and the buzzing flies, the sound of vomiting could be heard.
“Did it ever occur to you, Captain Barker, that the burns on the accused’s face and arms could have been caused by sunburn?”
Barker glanced over at de Marigny, who sat smiling, eating this testimony up; his pale face mocked Barker.
“Sure,” Barker told Higgs, “but I saw how white he was and ruled that out.”
“Really. Were you not aware that the accused is a yachtsman, and constantly in the sun?”
Barker hadn’t realized de Marigny’s current complexion had to do with spending many weeks indoors of late-in the Nassau Jail.
“I, uh, was struck by the absence of sunburn in a yachtsman.”
Higgs hammered Barker like that all day. He put Barker and Melchen’s slipshod investigative practices-in particular the botched fingerprint work-under a merciless magnifying glass. He made Barker admit that he hadn’t told Melchen about the print until Bar Harbor.
“Captain Barker, I would like you to look at two photographs of fingerprints lifted experimentally by defense expert Leonard Keeler from the area on the screen from which you have testified Exhibit J came.”
Barker took the photographs.
“Can you explain why Exhibit J is so perfect a print-without the wood-grain markings in the background exhibited by these other lifted prints?”
“Well…perhaps these prints were not lifted from the same precise area as Exhibit J.”
“Would you like to experiment yourself, Captain Barker? Would you like to step down and take various sample prints from the Chinese screen, in full view of the court? Perhaps you will be ‘lucky’ again.”
“I, uh…don’t think that would be appropriate.”
“I see. There is, however, a pattern of sorts in the background of Exhibit J, is there not?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything on the background of that screen that resembles these circles?”
“No, sir.”
“When you were lifting prints from that screen on the morning of July nine, did Captain Melchen bring the accused upstairs?”
“I understand that he did.”
“And didn’t you go to the door of the room where Captain Melchen was interviewing the accused, and ask, ‘Is everything okay?’”
“I did not.”
“Wasn’t the accused’s latent print obtained from some object in that room, possibly the drinking glass Captain Melchen asked de Marigny to hand him?”
“Definitely not!”
And the accusatory finger was thrust. “But it was after he left that room that you claimed to have discovered the print, was it not?”
“Yes.”
Higgs walked away, and his voice filled the courtroom in a manner even the theatrical Adderley could have envied.
“I suggest that you and Captain Melchen deliberately planned to get the accused alone in order to get his fingerprints!”
“We did not!” Barker’s composure was a memory now; he was shouting, sweating.
“Your expert testimony has never before been called upon in a case of such great public interest, has it? May I suggest that in your desire for personal gain and notoriety, you have swept aside the truth and substituted fabricated evidence!”
“I emphatically deny that!”
“My lord,” Higgs said, his face solemn with disgust, “I am quite finished with this witness.”
Barker was slumping in the box, his face long, haggard; he’d taken a worse beating from Higgs than the one I gave him. He walked out of the courtroom cloaked in silence-his own, and that of everyone present, a silence that spoke eloquently of its contempt.
The court was adjourned for lunch, and Gardner caught up with me as the crowd pressed toward the outside.
“The prosecution hasn’t rested yet,” Gardner said, “but the defense could win this without calling a witness.”
“Think so?”
“Cut and dried, son-thanks to that fingerprint evidence you came up with. That was a piece of detective work worthy of Paul Drake.”
“Who’s Paul Drake?”
Gardner laughed and slapped me on the back. “I like you, Heller!”
“You’re cute, too, Erle.”
Gardner was right. For all intents and purposes, the trial was over: the frame de Marigny had been fitted for was obvious. The defense held the courtroom for several days, but all was anticlimax.
De Marigny himself was a strong, intense witness who told his own story well, gesturing expressively, his French accent reminding the jurors that this man was fighting for his life in a foreign land. With the help of Higgs, Freddie convincingly portrayed himself as not only a solvent, but successful businessman.
The prosecution was singularly unsuccessful in penetrating his shield of self; Hallinan almost pitifully focused on whether or not Freddie had a right to call himself “Count,” only to find out he indeed did, but chose not to, even having instructed the local newspapers never to use the title.
De Marigny’s American friend Ceretta, as well as other guests at the party, testified to the events of the murder evening, including Freddie burning himself; these witnesses included teenage Betty Roberts, blond hair brushing the shoulders of her green-and-white-striped dress, her pretty smile and shapely figure making a hit with the press table.
Captain Sears was a predictably strong witness, and even Adderley’s best shots couldn’t budge him: he had seen Christie at midnight in downtown Nassau that night and that was that.
Len Keeler beat the dead horse that was the fingerprint issue.
Neither side called me as a witness; the defense didn’t need me, and the prosecution didn’t want me.
Adderley’s last stand-and the only really bad moment the defense suffered, presenting its case-was a devious effort to make Freddie’s pal the Marquis de Visdelou seem a liar.
The dapperly dressed Georges de Visdelou, so nervous he was shaking, had testified that at three in the morning he had, at Freddie’s request, fetched his cat. But Adderley confronted him with the following from his own signed statement: “I did not see de Marigny from eleven p.m. until ten a.m. the next morning.”
The Marquis responded to the forceful Adderley, “Perhaps I was confused when I said that…I am French, and very emotional….”
Over the lunch break I had helped Higgs and Callender pore over the original de Visdelou statement; it was in longhand, and we passed the pages around over lunch at the Rozelda Hotel.
“Here it is!” I said. “That Adderley is one sneaky son of a bitch….”
In court, Callender went over the statement with de Visdelou, demonstrating that the witness had indeed not seen de Marigny-they had spoken through the door!
“The statement makes this clear?” the Chief Justice asked.
“Yes, my lord,” Callender said, and handed the papers to the Chief Justice.
“Mr. Adderley,” the Chief Justice said sternly, his round face bunched as tight as a fist, “you gave me, and the jury, reason to believe that Mr. de Visdelou’s signed statement contradicted his courtroom testimony.”
Adderley rose; he cleared his throat. His usual self-confidence seemed to elude him. “My lord, I was only attempting to show that the witness did not see the accused from midnight on. My learned friend’s statement does not contradict that-it merely says the witness talked to the accused.”
The Chief Justice was red with fury. “I don’t appreciate such a fine distinction when a man’s life is at stake! Mr. Adderley, do not try my patience again.”
The final witness of note was Nancy de Marigny.
Looking pale and a little weak, in a white hat and black dress trimmed in white, the dead man’s daughter marched bravely to the witness box and supported her husband by way of her testimony. Her calm broke only once: her chin trembled and tears flowed as she told of Barker and Melchen’s coming to the New England funeral to deliver their horror story of how her husband supposedly murdered her father. De Marigny, in his cage, dabbed his eyes with a hanky; women in the gallery wept openly.
“Mrs. de Marigny,” Higgs asked her, “has your husband ever asked you for money?”
“No. Never.”
“Did your husband at any time ever express any hatred toward your father?”
“No. Never.”
When Nancy stepped down from the witness box, Higgs announced, “The defense rests, my lord!”
Higgs kept his closing remarks short; Hallinan, unwisely, gave the prosecution’s closing. Adderley, even embarrassed, would have done better. The Chief Justice’s summation to the jury was a virtual instruction for acquittal, and in particular was critical of Barker and Melchen.
After court recessed, Erle Gardner found me again, clapped me on the back and said, “Stay in touch, son!”
“Where are you going? The jury’s still out!”
“Like hell it is. I’m catching a plane back to the States this evening.”
Gardner was right. In less than two hours, the verdict came in: not guilty.
Cheers rocked the courtroom. The Chief Justice said to de Marigny, “You are discharged,” and Higgs hugged Callender, saying “We’ve won!” as both their wigs flew off; nearby, de Marigny was embracing his wife, and they were sharing a storybook kiss as Adderley and Hallinan stalked sullenly out.
But the foreman of the jury had been saying something, just after the verdict, making some recommendation that got all but drowned out by the cheers. And now, as de Marigny was carried out into the street on the shoulders of a good-natured multiracial mob, to the tune of “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” I wondered if what I thought I’d heard could be true.
If so, this wasn’t as happy an ending as de Marigny and his fair-weather fan club thought….