The Baker Street Jurors (16 page)

Now the engine stopped, with a final belch of carbon monoxide to make Nigel even dizzier, and the boat bumped up to the dock.

Nigel didn't wait for it to get tethered. He jumped immediately onto the relatively solid comfort of the wooden dock. The wind was picking up, with intermittent drops of a chilly rain. Nigel adjusted the collar on his mac and looked about.

With the high tide, there was virtually no beach at all. The mooring was at the rocky base of a hundred-foot cliff. The short dock connected to a narrow paved road, which split off in two directions. One branch wound in an S-curve up to the 1930s-style stucco hotel, and the other branch, even narrower, climbed up the cliffs in the opposite direction.

Three vehicles—a passenger van and two sedans—were driving down that road now from the hotel to the dock.

Ms. Sreenivasan, always smiling and not the least bit bilious, helped the jurors get from the boat onto the dock. “Lovely day, everyone, if you brought your umbrellas,” she proclaimed. “Mind your step.”

The judge came out, followed by the lawyers and the witness Pemberton.

The vehicles from the hotel pulled up to the dock—the passenger van first, and the two cars directly behind it. A portly man, wearing an apricot ascot and a sky-blue blazer with slight grazes of white paint on the elbows, got out of the driver's side of one of the sedans, walked directly up to the judge, and spoke with an accent that was upper class and professionally cheery.

“I'm Farnsworth. Welcome to our humble little island. I hope that you are Mr. Justice Allen?”

“I am. And I have brought the rather large group we spoke of.”

“Of course. We have both your vehicles ready. And you're in luck—it isn't quite high season yet. If it does turn out that you must stay the night, you and each of the barristers will have your own rooms. The jurors would have to share, of course.”

The judge nodded. “If it comes to that.”

“You know,” said Mr. Farnsworth pleasantly, “I read a story once about a man who had a dinner party at a place such as this and all of his guests got murdered.”

“Thank you for the idea, but these aren't dinner guests, they are my jurors,” said the judge. “And I don't intend to murder them. Unless they get especially unruly.”

“Do you want to bring everyone back to the hotel to freshen up a bit?”

The wind was picking up, and the judge looked up at the moving clouds. “No,” he said. “I want to go directly to the site and get this done as quickly as possible, while the weather holds.”

“Very well, we do have something blowing in, no question about it. Constable Bailey came across earlier, and he will drive the van for you.”

“I had to leave my bailiff behind, so if you have any additional personnel to help keep my jurors in line, I would appreciate it.”

“No, there's no one else—just the one constable.”

“Herding skills are all that is needed. A former nursery school teacher? A shepherd?”

“I'm afraid I don't have anyone else at all to send. Aren't your barristers up to it?”

The judge nodded in the direction of the two barristers, who were both busy on the dock, primping and checking the condition of their clothes.

“Oh. I see,” said Farnsworth. “Well, I am sorry, but there just isn't anyone else at the hotel besides the cook and one maid. You'll have to make do. Come this way. As you know, we don't allow private cars on the island. I brought you the two vehicles from the hotel. This is all there is. You'll be snug as sardines, but it's a short trip.”

They all moved toward the van and the available sedan.

Constable Bailey—a well-fed man in his forties—got out of the van and opened the side doors. “It seats fourteen passengers, in a pinch,” he said. “How do you want to do it?”

The judge and Ms. Sreenivasan looked at the minivan—which, if not luxurious, appeared to be at least capable of getting up the hill. The sedan looked as though it had been brought out of a shed and dusted off a bit just for this occasion.

“Most of us will fit in the van,” said the judge. “But the last six jurors will have to go in the sedan.”

Everyone else took their places in the van. The six remaining jurors all held back, eyeing the sedan suspiciously. It was an older Italian model, with bench seats in both front and back, theoretically capable of seating six. But that was advertising theory, and probably a bit optimistic.

Ms. Sreenivasan dangled the car keys in front of them. “One of you can drive a manual transmission, I hope?” she said.

No one responded immediately. Nigel had never driven a manual. He'd been a Londoner all his life, except for his two years off and on in Los Angeles, and he had never found that skill to be a requirement.

They all looked at each other for a moment—and then finally Lucy nodded.

“We're all set then,” said Ms. Sreenivasan, handing her the keys. “Just follow our van!”

Lucy got in the driver's side. Nigel moved quickly to get in next to her.

But not quickly enough. Siger was there first, holding the passenger door open for Mrs. Peabody, and then he got in after her.

“I think I'd better take the front,” he said. “Or my knees will be pushing through the top.”

Nigel wanted to point out that his own knees wouldn't be all that comfortable, either, but it had started to rain in earnest, and in any case it would seem petty in front of Lucy. He squeezed into the back with Armstrong and Bankstone, all of them holding in their knees and elbows as if seated in the midsection of coach on a transatlantic flight.

Lucy started the car. There was an initial crunch of gears as she tried to put it into first and got third instead—and then another crunch as she tried in another location—but on the next try she got it in gear, and with just a little spinning of wheels in the mud that was beginning to form, they whirred up the initial slope in pursuit of the van.

As planned, they reached the top of the slope with the van still in sight. Then it took a right turn—heading along the east side cliffs, toward some destination not yet in view.

“I do hope they know where we're going,” said Mrs. Peabody.

The gears crunched again as Lucy tried to downshift to go up the next rise. The sedan struggled, but maintained momentum.

“You'd think the hotel would have four-wheel drive available, for roads like this,” said Bankstone.

“You'd think,” said Armstrong.

They continued, with the rain and mud increasing all the while, up the narrow road that traced the perimeter of the cliffs.

“There it is,” said Siger.

“There what is?” said Nigel.

“See the stack of rocks above that promontory ahead of us?”

“Yes.”

“That's the remains of the wall from the old monastery that our pub hostess talked about.”

“You're an archeologist, then, in real life?” said Nigel.

“Well, no—but I did my homework.”

“Homework?” said Nigel.

“Of course. I saw it on the Internet when I looked up McSweeney's estate.”

“Oh my,” said Mrs. Peabody.

“Oh my—what?” said Siger.

Mrs. Peabody shrugged. “Well, it's not for me to say, certainly.”

“What isn't?” he said.

“She means that as a juror, you're not supposed to do outside research,” said Nigel. “Especially on the bloody Internet.”

“Oh,” said Siger. He thought it over for a moment, then said, “Oh, you thought I meant that I looked it up after I got on the jury? No, no—I didn't do that at all. I looked it up well before.”

“For any particular reason?” said Nigel.

“Um … no. I just … like to look things up.”

That sounded odd, but Nigel let it go.

“Eventually the ruins and the land around it were acquired by a nature conservancy,” said Siger, as though digging a deeper hole would help. “They leased their part of the island to a Scouting organization, who built a lodge back in the fifties, not far from the ruins. McSweeney came along a couple of years ago and built his own holiday estate on the island, but he wanted more—and when he saw the abandoned Scout camp, he offered so many bloody millions for it that the conservancy sold it to him. So he's allowed to build on the Scout camp when he wants to, but he is required by contract to leave the ruins alone.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Peabody, “at least none of that has anything to do with the case. I suppose we won't have to turn you in to the judge.”

“Oh!” said Lucy.

She suddenly swerved the car hard to the left. Mud flew from the wheels as she braked, and the car rocked steeply, mashing the passengers together to one side.

They came to a stop. It was a hairpin turn, and Lucy had barely seen it in time.

Nigel looked out his window and saw that they were within a foot of the cliff precipice. Immediately below was a hundred-foot drop, onto hard black boulders and crashing waves. Just beyond the curve ahead of them was a deep gorge, and a narrow wooden bridge that traversed it. The red taillights of the van were crossing that bridge now.

Lucy tried to put the sedan back into first gear; the gears crunched, and the wheels spun in the mud. “Sorry,” she said, as she tried again. “My fault. I took my eyes off the road for just a moment. I was trying to look at the ruins we're all talking about.”

“Not to worry,” said Nigel, peering over the edge. “When we get back to earth, I'll tell you all about the view you missed.”

The car got just enough traction to move forward, and the jurors gave a unanimous sigh of relief. They held their breaths again as they drove across the very splintery, minimalist bridge. Then they continued on for another quarter mile.

Finally they reached a relatively broad and level outcropping—where they saw the van, already parked.

“We did it!” said Lucy. “Flat land!”

Rain was pouring down. As they got out of the Fiat, Nigel moved toward Lucy's side of the car to include her under his full-sized golf umbrella—but she apparently didn't notice; she opened a collapsible one from her purse and walked past him.

Nigel, caught flat-footed, pretended for a moment that he had only come over to get a better view of the ruins on the summit behind them. Siger appeared to be doing that too.

Now the constable was shouting at them to join the rest of the group.

Everyone was huddled together near the beginning of a promontory that jutted some fifty yards out into the sea.

“This is the place!” Pemberton announced loudly. He seemed proud of himself.

The wind, the rain, and the sound of surf crashing below the cliff made it difficult for anyone to be heard.

Slattery, the prosecutor, shouted at the witness, “Surely you're not suggesting that you stood here and saw the defendant? The beach isn't even visible from here!”

“Objection!” yelled Langdon. “Argumentative!”

The judge shook his head angrily and shouted at both barristers. They cupped their hands to their ears, turned toward the judge, and yelled, almost in unison, “What?”

“I said, enough!” screamed the judge, as loudly as he could. “We are not taking either testimony or cross-examination at this moment! We are simply trying to suss out where we need to stand in order to see what we need to see!”

“Out there!” shouted Pemberton. “You need to stand out there. That's where I was. On those black rocks!”

He was pointing at the far end of the promontory, which narrowed to a cluster of slick boulders, no more than ten feet across.

“Of course,” screamed Pemberton helpfully, as the wind blew sheets of rain at the little group, “the weather was a bit more pleasant at the time!”

This might not be a good idea, thought Nigel. And he was beginning to not like Pemberton.

The judge seemed to have his doubts as well. He shook his head, and shouted something at Ms. Sreenivasan. She nodded. She and Constable Bailey proceeded to hustle all of the jurors back to the van, where they tried to all push inside and huddle out of the rain.

The judge and the two barristers walked out toward the rocky point. They stopped within a few feet of the edge of the promontory. They conferred. The witness shouted and pointed even farther out, to the absolute narrow end of the promontory. The judge looked in that direction, his coat collar turned up, and the wind violently blowing his wisps of white hair. He shook his head.

There was more shouting and gesturing from both barristers—and from the witness, still standing nearer the safer part of the promontory—and then, finally, the judge nodded.

The judge and the barristers returned now to the van, and the judge stuck his head in, with the two lawyers trying to look over his shoulders. “We have two choices,” he shouted, and then he brought his voice down a bit, realizing that inside the vehicle he could be heard. “We can return to the hotel, spend the night on the island, and hope that the weather clears tomorrow. Or we can put up with the wind and rain, go out and see the lovely view now, and with any luck, head back to the mainland tonight. What is your preference?”

“Let's get it over with!” shouted Bankstone.

“Show of hands?” said the judge.

It was almost unanimous. Everyone raised their hands except Nigel—partly because he wasn't quite certain that slick rocks on a rainy and windy day was a good idea—and partly because the prospect of spending the night in a resort hotel in close proximity to Lucy seemed like not a bad thing.

“Thirteen to one, that's a consensus,” said the judge. “Now, here are your instructions. You will come out onto the promontory as far as can be done safely, to get a view from the position where the witness claims to have been. We will do this in small groups, and for safety's sake, you will go no farther toward the edge than where Constable Bailey and I will be standing. You will have three seconds to look, no more, and then, I want you to go directly back to our vehicles and get out of the rain. Any questions?”