Blood Royal (32 page)

*   *   *

S
HE TOOK HER SEAT
in the first row. Trent was on her right, and farther down, at the other end of the bench, was where the prosecutor would sit. Neither the prosecutor nor his junior had arrived.

Philip Hall sat behind her and Trent in the row for juniors. In the row behind Hall, Sir Fredic, the instructing solicitor, sat.

Marlowe thought the arrangement of counsel in rows like benches at a train station was inefficient. The setup made it difficult for senior counsel to communicate with the junior without making it very obvious and even more difficult to communicate with the solicitor except by passing down notes or whispers through the junior.

Tradition got in the way of communication even worse when it came to the defendant. Marlowe spoke to the princess before the proceedings, but her client would be in the dock during the trial rather than beside her.

She felt conspicuous, a fly in a sugar bowl. The barristers were in dark robes and gray wigs, as were the prosecutors.

She had met Desai when she appeared before the judge to be granted permission to represent the princess. She thought about what Hall told her about the prosecutor. In the days when trial was by combat, the king or queen had a champion with lance and armor, and who threw down the gauntlet and challenged anyone who denied the monarch’s right to rule. Today, the Crown Prosecutor in wig and gown with a sharp pencil was the champion.

*   *   *

V. C. D
ESAI CAME INTO THE
courtroom. Along with his glowing brown predatory features and silver hair, the wig and robe gave him an even more dramatic appearance than the other barristers. It was also the way he carried himself, she thought: He didn’t just walk, he marched.

He paused in front of her, leaning across the front rail, and recited:

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy

With old odd ends, stolen out of holy writ;

And seem a saint…”

He leaned closer, bending over the rail down toward her, whispering, “When most I play the devil.”

He bowed. “Good morning, Miss James, Trent.”

Trent said to Marlowe, “A poor rendition of
Richard III.
”

“Did he prosecute him, too?” Marlowe asked.

Marlowe smiled encouragement up to the princess in the dock. The princess nodded down at her without smiling. She wore a calm mask, but Marlowe knew how forlorn the woman felt, how frightened and alone it was to be center stage in a murder trial.

The jury was seated with minor quibbling, none of it in front of them.

The previous day Trent had made a demand for the results of the prosecution’s investigation and elimination of potential jurors, and the prosecutor had refused to provide the information—or even admit that vetting had occurred. The judge backed up the prosecutor’s position on the grounds of national security, a term Marlowe decided the British government seemed to employ to its advantage.

Seven women, five men, no one too rich, too old, or too young, eleven white, one black—it was a reasonable cross-section of people in the city who weren’t able to avoid jury service on one excuse or another, only in this case no one wanted to avoid it. It occurred to her that the people on the jury were a good representation of solid middle-class British values. That was the kind of jury prosecutors sought—and that made her wonder whether it had been stacked. Defendants sought younger people, poor minorities, people with liberal educations, people with indications that they had counterculture values—bottom line, people who were more inclined to question authority and would not automatically take the word of a police officer as the gospel. The only minority on the jury, a bank officer of African descent, looked too successful to Marlowe for her to believe that he questioned authority. Most minorities suffered a degree of prejudice almost every day of their lives, but it bounced off the backs of some of them and angered others. The bank officer didn’t seem the angry type.

The jurors took an oath of fairness:
I swear by the Almighty God I will faithfully try the defendant and give a true verdict according to the evidence.

That’s how it was in the courtroom, nearly everyone took—or had previously taken—an oath to serve justice. Attorneys took an oath before they got their license to practice, judges when they were appointed to the bench, people called to the witness box swore to state “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

The judge, Lord Bennington, was rigid, the type who ran a courtroom as a tight ship. He had a thin, humorless smile that seemed permanently etched on his face, and a sharp, dry, sarcastic wit that was seldom used but left nasty cuts when it was.

“Eminently qualified,” Hall had told her earlier about the judge. “Tends to lean toward the conservative side of legal issues, but he’s reasonably fair. We could have done better, but we also could have drawn much worse.”

Her own take on the judge was that he was the type to give you enough rope when he wanted to hang you. He had been extremely condescending when she had met with him prior to trial. The fact that an American trial attorney—a woman, no less—was appearing as trial counsel obviously frayed his ingrained sense of the reserve and propriety of his elitist concept of British jurisprudence.
One is supposed to reply kindly, Yes, milord, No, milord, as he puts the rope around your neck,
Marlowe thought. She had assumed initially that she would give lip service to the courtroom decorum by also addressing him as “Your Lordship,” but after he told her that he expected her to dress “ladylike” rather than the fashionable feminine suit of pants and jacket she wore to the courtroom, she decided a simple “Your Honor” would do and that she would dress as she damn well pleased.

She wasn’t stupid enough to piss off a judge—it was always a no-win scenario for a lawyer. But when anyone stepped out of line and gave her a push, she pushed back. The judge wasn’t happy about her representing the princess and might have been less critical had she been a male trial lawyer. Her instinct was to push back. If she didn’t, she felt she would risk having the judge prejudice the jury against her. Judges did it subtly, not so much by a choice of words but a slight difference in tone that subliminally conveyed lesser respect for one attorney than another. When she pushed back and showed a judge she had teeth, most jurists became cautious and neutral. And if nothing else, it showed the jury that she believed in her client and had the courage to stand and fight.

“Mr. Desai,” the judge said, nodding at the prosecutor, signaling him to present his opening statement to the jury, to “open the case for the prosecution,” as Philip Hall had put it.

“Your Lordship.” Desai, five or six feet down the bench from her, stood and faced the jury to make his opening statement.

“As you have been told, I am the Crown Prosecutor in this matter. I have, along with my junior, Mr. Timmings, the official duty to place before you the physical evidence and sworn testimony that the crown has gathered from witnesses, police, and forensic experts. To fulfill that duty, at this time it is my privilege to introduce you to the particulars of the offense and a summary of the evidence that will be presented. You have before you a copy of the indictment. As you can see, the crown alleges the killing of a human being in a premeditated manner with deliberation, in cold blood, if you will.

“As you all know, as the whole world I am sure knows, this trial revolves around the death of a man, not an ordinary man, but a person of great eminence and importance, but also a man who is capable of suffering and bleeding as any of us.”

Bastard,
Marlowe thought. There was no evidence of “suffering” and Desai knew it. But she kept her mouth shut—Hall had told her that objections were tolerated but only when absolutely necessary.

“I do believe that I will be bearing false witness if I tell you that the case will not revolve around who killed him—the shooting was televised and watched by many millions—but why the shooting occurred. The ‘why’ will become obvious as you hear the evidence.

“The evidence will show that the killer is a neurotic, immature woman, a compulsive reader of silly romance novels in which beautiful virginal young women and handsome dashing young men with powerful loins come together in fiery embrace.

“She is a woman who has never performed a day’s work in her life—born and raised in the lap of luxury, she is very much the spoiled girl in ‘The Princess and the Pea’ who thought of herself as so delicate, she felt a single pea hidden beneath twenty mattresses.

“She has exceeded at nothing, but was chosen to marry a prince and be a presumptive future queen because of her social position and physical attractiveness. She came into the marriage not as a mature woman with realistic ideals about what marriage entailed, but with juvenile notions.

“Nurtured on romantic drivel, from early in life she saw herself not as an ordinary person who must work and play and marry within the bounds of our society, but as someone
chosen
by the gods to be a queen. The prince was taken by her and lured into marriage by her. But he soon found that he had not married a responsible young woman, but a demanding girl with impossible romantic notions, and who wanted him at her feet day and night.

“The prince was a man of moderation and impeccable manners. He respected tradition and was dedicated to the tasks the nation assigned to him. He found relief from the tremendous pressures of his official duties in reading matters of intellectual concern—often issues of moral and social significance—and in sports activities with a small circle of friends.

“However, this life pattern was not one that the princess wanted. She expected the prince to give up his social activities, his pleasures of polo and the hunt, and provide her with the attention she craved—
and demanded
!

“When her neurotic demands for his fullest attention were not heeded, she tried to capture his attention with staged, melodramatic attempts to hurt herself. When she became pregnant with the prince heir to the throne, and was again denied the absolute attention she sought, she brought these theatrical dramas to an almost tragic conclusion by throwing herself down a stairway in an attempt to
murder
the baby in her womb!”

“Objection!”
Marlowe snapped, getting to her feet. “That statement is outrageous, it’s a lie and outrageous, and the prosecutor knows it! He’s deliberately trying to prejudice the jury. I want the statement struck and the prosecutor sanctioned.”

“Please take your seat, Miss James,” the judge told her. He was agitated, but controlled it as he sent the jurors out of the courtroom.

Trent rose after the last juror had filed out. “Our apologies, Your Lordship. Miss James is not familiar with the decorum of our system. But I must say that my learned friend, Mr. Desai, has stepped beyond the bounds of tempered advocacy.”

“He’s prejudiced this jury with an outrageous remark,” Marlowe said.

The judge stared down at her. It was the first time she had seen his thin smile gone. He spoke calmly but firmly. “Miss James, you are permitted to make objections. Shouting them in a loud, argumentative voice is not part of our procedures. Perhaps that is the way of the American system, but we abide by a different courtroom etiquette.”

She faced him without flinching. “I apologize, Your Honor, but I was caught completely by surprise. I expected the courtroom etiquette to be on a much higher level. It came as a shock to hear the prosecutor take a cheap shot at the defendant, accusing her of a heinous crime without proof, the sort of underhanded tactic that I wouldn’t expect from a prosecutor anywhere in the free world. I’m making a motion for a mistrial. This jury should be excused and a new one impaneled.”

The judge looked like he was going to have a coronary. He was speechless, probably for the first time in his professional life. He gained control of himself and spoke in a calm, deliberate manner. “Please resume your seat. Mr. Desai, you will deal with the evidence in the matter before the court and not bring in collateral matters.”

“Yes, Your Lordship.”

“This is an unusual case in all aspects, but let us remember that we have—
that most of us have
—been trained to observe proprieties and protocols that do not include attempting to inflame the jury with matters not supported by the evidence.”

With the jury back in the courtroom, Desai continued his opening.

“When the defendant discovered that she had driven away the prince and she believed he had taken refuge in the arms of another woman, hate and anger consumed her. She was a woman with violent jealous tendencies, capable of sitting in front of her husband and cutting herself with a blade. The fact that she had been rejected festered in her, inflaming her thoughts, her very marrow.

“In order to understand why the crime was committed, why the life of an innocent person bled out of a gunshot wound, you have to understand how the prisoner in the dock thought of herself.

“In each case of that romantic drivel she read, the handsome prince casts aside the attentions of shrews and vixens and takes into his arms and his heart the deserving young heroine.”

Desai’s voice grew low, deliberately. Jurors and the judge leaned forward to catch his words.

“But you see, she had not won the love of the prince. After her childish antics from the beginning of the marriage, her irrationality, endless demands for attention, she had lost his passion—his ardor had gone to another woman.

“To her shock, she realized she was the vixen in the story, the ugly stepsister, an ill-tempered, malicious shrew who would act out her rage at the truth with murder.…”

He paused and met the eye of each juror in turn. “I used an interesting phrase earlier, ‘in cold blood.’ By that I am referring to the fact that the crime was committed deliberately and premeditatedly, that it was not a result of a sudden rush of anger.

“This scorned woman calculated, deliberated, and premeditated, finally—in her own twisted mind—arriving at a scheme to get revenge for what she considered to be a slight to the self-image she had created for herself out of silly stories of romantic fantasies.