by D. W. Buffa
‘Is that correct?’ repeated Roberts in the face of Marlowe’s determined silence.
‘Yes, that’s correct. I killed him; I told the others what to do.’
Everything Roberts did now was pure calculation, each question a ruthless attack on what Marlowe had done. ‘Describe how you did it—how you held that fourteen-year-old boy so he could not move and stabbed him in the heart!’
‘Objection!’ cried Darnell as he sprang to his feet. ‘The witness does not have to do any such thing and the prosecution knows it! Let him ask his questions—Mr Marlowe will answer. The prosecution doesn’t have the right to demand that he provide some macabre description, the only purpose of which is to induce a sense of revulsion!’
Homer Maitland agreed. ‘This is cross-examination, Mr Roberts. Ask a question.’
Roberts’s gaze, which had not left the witness, became more intense. ‘You held your hand over his face?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you stab him through his shirt, or did you make him open it first?’
‘I told him he should open it,’ said Marlowe in a bleak, whispered voice.
Roberts’s eyes flashed with recognition. ‘Because it was easier to drive the knife in and because, if he had been wearing the shirt, it would have soaked up the blood instead of letting it gush out— wasn’t that the reason, Mr Marlowe? Isn’t that the reason you made him open it?’
‘Yes,’ said Marlowe with downcast eyes.‘And because that way death would be just a little quicker.’
‘You were concerned about that, were you? Concerned about sparing him any unnecessary suffering?’
Marlowe’s eyes came up. There was a look of warning in them, as if Roberts had threatened something Marlowe could not allow.
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice slowly rising. ‘Killing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’
‘But you did it, didn’t you?’ Before Marlowe could answer, he asked,‘And you drank his blood, too, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’
‘To stay alive?’
‘To stay alive.’
‘And after the blood, there was still the body. We’ve heard testimony that the head was cut off and, besides that, the hands and feet. Is that true? Is that what you did?’
‘Yes, sir, I did.’
‘Because you couldn’t stand to look at the face of the boy you murdered?’
Marlowe’s gaze grew distant. In the midst of all the taunting questions and all the prying glances, a part of him had left. He gave the answers the way a man might repeat the lessons learned in his youth, without a conscious thought as to what any of it meant. ‘No, it wasn’t that. He was dead; the body had to be prepared.’
‘And so you…?’
‘Removed the head, the appendages, gutted it—what you do with anything you have killed for food.’
Marlowe’s eyes suddenly came back to life, raging with self-hatred that quickly turned to anger at the audacity of the question. He gripped the arm of the chair and bent forward. ‘Do you want me to tell you more? Would you like me to tell you how I carved him up? Would you like to know what it was like to eat human flesh? He’s dead! I killed him! Isn’t that enough?’ he cried as the courtroom erupted in noise.
‘Not another word! Not another sound!’ ordered Homer Maitland. He beat his gavel hard and kept doing it until he had silenced the boisterous crowd.‘One more word from anyone—I’ll clear the room!’
Roberts had heard the noise, felt it vibrate up through the floor and go straight to his bones. It drove him forward, made him even more relentless. His eyes cut into Marlowe with all the force he had.‘And then, a few days later, when you had done with him, when there was nothing left, you chose another; a woman this time, Helena Green.You killed her next, yes?’
‘We drew lots a second time.Yes, it’s true.’
‘Killed her and drank her blood?’
‘Yes.’
‘Killed her, drank her blood, then removed her head, her hands, her feet, and then gutted her body. Is that what you did?’
asked Roberts in a fury.
Marlowe nodded, and then waited, silent.
‘And then you ate her?’
‘Yes, to stay alive.’
‘Yes, to stay alive,’ repeated Roberts in a scornful voice as his eyes moved towards the jury. ‘And then, after Helena Green was used, you had another drawing, and another victim was chosen. Isn’t that—? Wait,’ he said, suddenly remembering something. His head bent at a puzzled angle, he looked at Marlowe. ‘The boy— he was stabbed in the heart.Why did you stab her in the throat?’
Marlowe looked down at his hands. ‘She asked me to,’ he said in a barely audible voice.
‘What did you say?’ asked Roberts, incredulous. ‘She asked you to?’
‘I think she thought it would be immodest to expose her chest. She didn’t want to be that naked.’
Roberts started to attack the answer, to insist that it could not have happened that way, but he stopped himself—staring hard at Marlowe, he realised that it was true. He began to pace slowly in front of the jury box. A few seconds later—which, in the tense heated atmosphere of the courtroom, seemed much longer—he placed one hand on the railing and with the other stroked his chin. ‘You killed the boy first, then the woman, and then a third person, and then another. And you kept doing this because it was the only way to keep the rest of you alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you did not think there was any chance that any of you would be rescued? Isn’t that what you testified in response to a question from Mr Darnell?’
‘No, I didn’t think any of us would survive. I was sure we would not.’
‘But then nothing that you did was necessary, was it?’ asked Roberts in a voice that struck a solemn chord. ‘Forget for the moment that you were found, that six of you were saved— you didn’t believe that would happen, so that was never the reason why you killed the others, was it? It was not because you thought it was necessary so that at least some of you could survive the shipwreck, it was because you were willing to do anything —even murder—just to live a few more days. Isn’t that what happened, Mr Marlowe? Isn’t that why you killed six people? Because you would rather murder someone than give up even just a few days of what, by your own admission, was a painful, tortured existence that some might think worse than death itself?’
‘That wasn’t why I did it. That wasn’t the choice I had. It wasn’t die without killing, or kill and die a little later.We were all going to die—that’s what I was so certain of. We were going to die. That was never a question. The question was how we were going to die—by just giving up, or by letting each one believe that with his death, someone else would live? Each of those who died thought he had made himself a willing sacrifice to save the others. That was why I did it, why I agreed to that terrible lottery—so the death of each of them could be heroic, so there was some meaning in their lives. There was nothing wrong with what we did.What was wrong is that we lived.’
Chapter Twenty
THERE WAS SOMETHING MISSING, SOMETHING not quite logical, in Marlowe’s explanation of the lottery they had played to put one another to death. It had been based on an illusion, a myth that, if Marlowe did not invent it, he had done nothing to dispel: the belief that some could live, if only others were willing to die. But had not Marlowe as good as admitted that no one had really thought there was any chance they would ever see land again? Had he not admitted that, whatever they might have said to encourage one another, they knew they were all going to die?
Roberts tried to drive home the point. ‘You were in the middle of the south Atlantic, the only ship that had seen you had sailed off.You just testified that you did not think there was any chance of rescue, and you told us earlier that, deep down, the others must have known it too. But if they did not believe there was any chance of rescue, they could not possibly have believed that their deaths would make a difference, that their deaths would be heroic, coul
d they?’
‘It did not matter what they thought. I told them that there was still a chance, that we could not give up hope, that we had to keep trying. What else could we do? I was the one in charge. The Evangeline and everyone on her was my responsibility. I had failed in that—she sank—I could not fail in this! I told them that every day we stayed alive we were a day closer; I told them that another ship would come. Another day! Do you know what that means, when death is hovering over you, waiting to take you away? Yes, we were all going to die, and maybe all of us knew it, but the heart and mind don’t always stick with what we know.We aren’t made like that; we have to have something we can cling to, some faith that makes sense out of what we can’t avoid. Death was coming, Mr Roberts—what else could we believe in if not that life would go on?’
Marlowe’s large deep-set eyes drew back in on themselves. He was about to add something, to explain his thought,but he changed his mind and just shook his head. Then he changed his mind again. ‘That’s why each time it happened, each time someone was about to be killed so the others could live, we said a prayer.’
Roberts looked at him sharply. ‘A prayer? You said a prayer when someone was “about to be killed”? What are you saying? That you tried to turn murder into some kind of ritual, some twisted idea of a religious service?’
Marlowe raised his chin.‘No, just a prayer that this would be the last time we would have to do it, and that we would be forgiven for what we had been forced to do.’
‘And then you killed him—or her—and used the blood, the body, to stay alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Though you knew—or thought you knew—it was only a matter of time before you would all be dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you would have gone on like this, killing each of them in turn—and saying that same prayer each time you did it—until there was no one left? Was that your plan, Mr Marlowe—to kill them all?’
‘Yes, it was.’
Angry, disturbed, Roberts stalked back to the counsel table where he threw open a file folder that lay on top and, while he studied something in it, caught his breath.
‘You would have killed them all,’ he muttered as he closed the file and looked at Marlowe in the dim light that filtered through the courtroom windows. He tapped his fingers on the table and then, as if it were the only way to stop the habit, moved two steps away, too far to reach it.
‘You were very careful about the way you answered Mr Darnell’s questions about how this decision was made in the first place.You say you are willing to take responsibility for what happened, but you want us to believe that it was, in a manner of speaking, only after the fact: that there was something like a consensus—yes, I know, there were a few dissenters—that something had to be done, that someone had to be sacrificed or everyone would die. But even if that is true, why didn’t you convince them to do what Aaron Trevelyn claims he suggested? If you could not wait until someone died of natural causes, why didn’t you choose the person who was already closest to death? Would that not have been more reasonable, more humane, than to leave it all to chance?’
Occupied for most of his life with thoughts of his own, without interest in the things that drove the ambitions of other men, Marlowe did not see the question that lay just beyond his answer. ‘It would not have been right to single out the sick. We could not let calculation enter into it.We had to leave it to chance, and, at least in that sense, let God decide.’
‘God and you, don’t you mean? Or was it God who told you to decide who would have to enter your lottery of death and who would not? Or was it you who told God whom he could pick from and whom he could not? That’s what happened, isn’t it?’ asked Roberts in a caustic voice. ‘You decided that two of you would be immune. You decided that neither you nor Hugo Offenbach would have to take your chances with the others, didn’t you?’
The look on Marlowe’s face was the look of blasted hopes and broken dreams; the look of a man with nothing left who goes on living only because he still has one more duty to perform.‘I tried … I wanted to take his place. I would have, if he had not made me promise to try to save the others,’ he mumbled, as he looked around the courtroom in a half-mad search to find the face of someone who might understand.
‘You killed him, killed that fourteen-year-old boy.You left his life to chance, but you would not allow Hugo Offenbach to run the same risk. Just how was that a question of necessity, Mr Marlowe? How was that something about which you did not have any choice? … Well, Mr Marlowe, what is your answer? Why wasn’t Hugo Offenbach subject to the same risk as the rest?’
‘Because he was better than the rest of us, because he has the kind of gift that only God can give!’
‘But you would not let God decide!’ Roberts shouted back. ‘Better than the rest of you? You’re saying he had a better right to live?’
‘Better right to live? Yes, I wouldn’t doubt it. Look what he can do for others, what he brings to the world. If you had to choose, Mr Roberts—if you had to choose between him and me … If any of you,’ he said, twisting his shoulders until he squarely faced the jury, ‘had to choose between us, choose whether I was going to die or Mr Offenbach, why would anyone choose me? It’s all well and good to say we both should live, and to say that we’re both equal in the sight of God, but leave all that for God and eternity. Someone has to die—not tomorrow, not someday, but now! Of course you choose him to live. It would be immoral if you didn’t.’
‘That doesn’t answer the question. You said you knew there was no chance of rescue,’ Roberts insisted, his voice harsh and strident. ‘No one was going to survive, so why didn’t he have to take his chances the same as all the others? Where was the necessity, Mr Marlowe? Where was the necessity? That’s what I’m trying—what we’re all trying—to understand!’
‘It was what the woman said—Mrs Wilcox. He gave us a reason to go on living. It was the music. Don’t you see? We were huddled together in that boat, living off the flesh and blood of each other. We weren’t human, except for the hope we had and the music, his music, the music he made. We were living in the filth of our own excrement, diseased and dying, some of us in the grip of hallucinations—and, despite all that, we still had the knowledge, each time he played, that we were human after all, and that maybe we could somehow get through yet another day. The others—the ones who died—they kept the rest of us alive and breathing; but he was the one who made us want to live, he was the one who made it seem worth doing what we had to, for as long as we could.’
‘The choice was to let everyone die a peaceful death, a death from natural causes, or to engage in violent acts of slaughter so you could live like cannibals for just a few days longer—and you chose murder! Was it really that important to listen to Hugo Offenbach play the violin?’ asked Roberts with contempt as he wheeled away from the witness.‘I have no more questions of this…’
The look of open hostility faded from his eyes. He looked at Marlowe without emotion. ‘Mr Marlowe, let me ask you point blank: do you think what you did was excusable? Do you believe that the killing of these people should be forgiven because it was the only way to save the others who had survived the shipwreck of the Evangeline?’
‘No, sir, I do not. I did what I thought I had to, but that doesn’t make it right. It was the least evil thing I could do, but that doesn’t make it good.’
A murmur ran through the crowd, a silent tribute to Marlowe’s unflinching honesty.
‘No further questions, your Honour.’
Judge Maitland peered over his glasses at William Darnell, who sat slumped in his chair, staring into the middle distance.
‘Mr Darnell, is there anything you wish to ask on redirect?’
Darnell was aware, as he sat thinking about what he wanted to do next, that every eye was on him, waiting to see what surprises he had in store. He let them wait.
‘Mr Darnell?’ Maitland prodded gently.
With a grave expression, Darnel
l rose slowly from the chair. He stood right there; he did not move a step. Placing his hand on his hip, he bent slightly forward at the waist.
‘In answer to one of Mr Roberts’s questions, you admitted that you could not really know whether a ship might appear. I believe what Mr Roberts said was: “For all you knew, for all you could have known, you might have been rescued not forty days after the Evangeline sank, but the day after the ship that passed you sailed out of view.” And then he added—and it is a point that struck me so forcibly that, if I wanted to, I could not forget his words—“For all you knew, or could have known, another ship might at that very moment have been coming straight towards you.” Do you remember that, Mr Marlowe? And do you remember what you said—that for all you knew, or could have known, that might have happened. My question, Mr Marlowe, is whether it is still your testimony that, as Mr Roberts insisted, you could not have known—not with any kind of certainty—whether rescue might not be just hours or days away?’
Darnell barely waited for Marlowe to say that he had no reason to change what he had said. ‘So we now have the rather unusual situation in which, on a point crucial to the case, both the defence and the prosecution agree: you did not know when or whether a ship might suddenly appear. Mr Roberts takes that fact to mean—what was it he said?—“because you could not know whether a ship might not appear the next day or even the next hour, there was no necessity to do what you did.” I take that fact—and I believe any reasonable person would take that fact— to mean that there was indeed a necessity to do what you did.’
Roberts was on his feet, insisting that Darnell should make his argument during his summation.
‘I will,’ said Darnell. ‘But right now I’m trying to ask a question, if counsel will allow it!’ He turned back to Marlowe.‘It’s true, isn’t it, that whatever you may have believed, whatever you may have feared, Mr Roberts is right, you could not have known whether a ship might suddenly appear?’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s true.’
‘And if you had just waited, as Mr Roberts seems to suggest you should have, and let—how did he put it?—“let everyone die a peaceful death”, there would have been no survivors. Isn’t that true, Mr Marlowe?’