The Evangeline

by D. W. Buffa

  ‘Your Honour, the defence calls Cynthia Grimes!’

  Everyone knew she was missing;no one knew he had found her. Since the day Darnell revealed the fact of her affair with Benjamin Whitfield and her quick and inexplicable disappearance from the hospital, she had become first a mystery and then a legend, a woman about whom anything could be imagined because so little was actually known. She was young and beautiful—that much was certain; she was less than half the age of Whitfield and younger, much younger, than Whitfield’s wife. But this was not the reason for the gasps that came from the crowd when the door at the back of the courtroom opened and she appeared:Cynthia Grimes was pregnant.

  With one hand on her stomach, she raised the other and took the oath. Everyone there knew immediately that she had become pregnant before the Evangeline had sailed. Darnell confirmed it.

  ‘You were pregnant, I take it, before you left with the others to sail around Africa?’

  She spoke with a kind of shy reserve; unwilling, it seemed, to look at the jury, or anyone but Darnell.

  ‘Not quite two months.’

  ‘You’re not married, are you?’ he asked in a warm, sympathetic voice.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You understand there is a reason why I ask these questions? That no one wants to embarrass you or to intrude on your privacy, but that—’

  ‘Benjamin Whitfield is the father,’ she said, shaking off any suggestion that she might be reluctant to discuss it. ‘That is the reason why he left Nice, why he didn’t go on that voyage—he wanted to get away from me.’

  Darnell moved from behind the table to the railing of the jury box. He looked straight at her.‘You left San Francisco immediately after you were flown here from Brazil with the other survivors, and you’ve been out of the country until just the day before yesterday, if I understand correctly. Are you aware that Mr Whitfield testified earlier in the trial, and that he gave an entirely different reason for why he did not join the rest of you on the Evangeline?’

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that.’

  ‘And would you please tell the jury how you happen to know this?’

  ‘Because you sent me transcripts of the trial so I would know exactly what was said.’

  ‘Yes, and the reason I did that—can you tell the jury what I said?’

  For the first time, she turned to the jury. She smiled, or started to, but then, as if that were the limit of her bravery, dropped her gaze and fled back to the waiting eyes of William Darnell. ‘You said you wanted me to know everything that was said because you hoped I would change my mind and come back to testify.’

  ‘And because of what you read, because of some of the things that have been said in the course of this trial, you decided that was something you wanted to do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re not here under subpoena?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re here of your own free will?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell us then, what makes you think that Benjamin Whitfield was not telling the truth when he said that he had to return to the United States because his father was in the hospital dying? The fact that you were pregnant, the fact that he was the father— neither of those things proves that what he said was false. It would be quite natural, would it not, for him to want to be with his father when his father’s death was imminent?’

  ‘It would be, in any normal situation, but most men don’t hate their fathers the way Benjamin hated his. Return to be with him when he died? Benjamin could not wait to spit on the old man’s grave! When he first heard that his father was dying—not from anyone in his family, but from the family’s lawyer—he said he wished he felt more religious so he could believe in hell. He did not return because of his father; he returned because of me.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.You were lovers; you had just learned you were pregnant with his child—was he angry with you because of that?’

  ‘Angry doesn’t quite describe it! He had been planning this trip for months. It was our chance to spend a few weeks together. At least that is what he said when he asked me to come along. He was still married, but that was over, or so he told me when we began our affair. They were getting a divorce, but there were certain financial considerations to be resolved first—things about the way the stock would have to be handled if he was going to keep the controlling interest in that company of his. He told me he wanted to marry me; he told me that he wanted children. He told me a lot of things, and I suppose he may have meant them when they were still only promises and the time to keep them seemed a long way off. He had a gift for making you believe the future would be everything you wanted and that it was already as good as here. When I found out I was pregnant, I felt like we were already married; but when I told him, I discovered that it had all been lies.’

  Darnell dragged his hand along the railing as he moved a step closer. His eyes, full of encouragement, never left her. ‘He was angry—more than angry—you said?’

  ‘He told me that I was an idiot, a fool! He could not understand how I could let it happen, why I had not taken precautions. He told me that it was my fault and that I would have to fix it.’

  ‘Fix it?’

  ‘Yes. Have an abortion and do it right away. I said I would not. I did not know what I wanted to do, but I was not going to let him decide. I suppose I also thought that he was upset because of all the other things going on in his life—the financial problems he was having, the trouble he was in—and that he did not really mean the things he had said. I suppose I thought that when we were finally out at sea, when he had had time to think things through…’ Her voice drifted off; a rueful smile came slowly to her lips.

  ‘He was right. I was an idiot, a fool. When I said we could decide all that when we got back, he started screaming, telling me that I had to do something about the baby, that it could not wait. I told him I was not going to do anything until the Evangeline came back. That’s when he said it, when he said he was not going, and that I could go alone. He said he had too many things he had to take care of, too many problems at home; that if he had not invited all those other people on the trip he would get rid of the Evangeline, sell her for whatever he could get. That was the last thing he ever said to me—that if he did not have either the Evangeline or me to worry about, his life would be a whole lot better, that both of us had “already cost him far too much!”’

  Darnell gave her a moment to compose herself. ‘So you went on that voyage alone. And while you were sailing on the Evangeline did you come to any conclusions about whether or not to keep the child? I mean before the storm and what happened after?’

  ‘I knew that it was over with Benjamin, that there had never been anything there to begin with. It was one of those illusions we believe because we want so much for it to be true. There was no Benjamin for me to marry; no father for my child. When we got back to Nice, when we had finished the trip around Africa, I was going to do what he had suggested—not because he wanted me to, but because I did not want to be a single mother.’

  ‘But something made you change your mind? Was it something that happened after the Evangeline broke apart, when you were out there in that lifeboat with the others who had managed to get away?’

  Her eyes moved with tender caution to where Marlowe sat alone. ‘It was because of the child that he saved my life.’

  ‘The defendant, Vincent Marlowe? Tell us what you mean, what he did.’

  ‘I was scared. No, terrified. I was a coward, pure and simple. I did not want to die. I wasn’t brave like Helena Green or the others who died with so much courage; I wasn’t as brave as that fourteen-year-old boy. I told Marlowe—I begged him. I said I was pregnant, that I did not want to lose the baby. And I was not lying when I said it. At least I don’t think I was. I was so weak, so exhausted—we had not had anything to eat or drink for days, and the conditions … You’ve heard about them from other witnesses, but you really can’t imagine how awful things were. I
used to close my eyes and hope that I would never open them. But then, when it was decided what we had to do, I felt an instinct I had not known I had. I could let myself die, but I could not let that happen to my child. I thought we were all going to die out there, but I knew that as long as there was any chance, any chance at all, I had to do whatever I could to save the life inside me.’

  ‘You told Marlowe you were pregnant so that you would not have to draw lots with the others?’

  ‘Yes. I thought he would see that he could not do it, that there was this life inside me that could not be taken.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone else you were pregnant? Did you try to convince the others to leave you out?’

  ‘No, only Marlowe. The others, some of them, were mad with hunger. If he had not got everyone to agree that it was only right and fair to choose by lot, if the ones chosen—and especially that boy—had not been so willing, if they had not shown such courage —if they had not shamed Trevelyn and those who thought like him—the stronger would have killed the weaker and then started murdering among themselves.’

  ‘So Marlowe decided by himself that, because you were pregnant, you would not be included?’

  She looked again at Marlowe, this time in a way that suggested that she had finally grasped something she had not understood before. ‘Marlowe said he could not do it; that he was sorry. It was only when I learned from the transcripts that the boy was not chosen by chance, that I knew that he had done the same thing for me: made certain that I would not be chosen, at least not until the end, when there was no chance left for anyone. Marlowe saved me—I know it now, because I knew it then. It was the way he looked at me each time we had to draw again, as if he were telling me that I and the child I had inside me would be safe a little longer. That’s why I’m having the child, why I did not abort it—too many people died so I could give it life!’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  FINALLY ROBERTS UNDERSTOOD. DARNELL WAS even better than he had thought. Other lawyers tried to shift the blame from the defendant to someone else, to make it seem that the defendant was as much a victim as the actual victim of the crime, but he had seldom seen it done with such subtlety and craft. First the naval architect to show with how little effort the Evangeline could have been made completely safe; then the young woman, pregnant and beautiful, to show how little Benjamin Whitfield had cared about anything but himself. There was only one conclusion the jury could reach: if it had not been for Marlowe, none of those whom Whitfield sent had with such blind indifference to an almost certain death would have come through their horrifying ordeal alive; if it had not been for Marlowe, Whitfield’s child would never see the light of day. Darnell was making a hero of a man who had admitted to murder. Roberts had to stop it.

  ‘Tell us, if you would, Ms Grimes,’ said Roberts as he began his cross-examination, ‘did Mr Whitfield ever say, even in anger, that he hoped that the Evangeline would sink?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Of course not? Because whatever difficulties in which he may have found himself, whatever financial obligations he may have had, he would never have wanted anyone on the Evangeline to be harmed—correct?’

  Cynthia Grimes was no ordinary witness, and no ordinary woman. She had a rather different sense of human motivation than she had had before. The Evangeline had made her quicker to see beyond the surface into the darkened heart of things.

  ‘Are you asking what he might have wanted, or what he might have done about it? No, I don’t think he would have deliberately done anything to cause us harm. But do I think he would have minded? Why don’t you ask him what he thought, when he first heard that the Evangeline might be missing?’

  ‘You agree that he would not have done anything to harm those aboard the Evangeline. Good. As far as you know, then, the decision he made with respect to the time-consuming and, according to the builder, unnecessary check of the welding seams in the hull was made in perfect good faith? He never said to you, “I’m not going to check them because if it sinks I can collect the insurance money,” did he?’

  She seemed almost to enjoy it, this effort to protect the innocence and good name of the man who had betrayed her. It provided certain possibilities for revenge. ‘Benjamin Whitfield did not get where he is by saying such stupid things. But no, in answer to your question, he never said that,’ she said with a bitter smile. ‘Of course, neither did he bother to tell me—or any of the others he waved goodbye to—that there had even been a question about whether the Evangeline might break apart in a storm! Nor has he offered to use any of that insurance money—the millions that he collected because the Evangeline sank—to compensate any of us who suffered because of his selfish negligence!’ she cried.

  The courtroom erupted into a bedlam of noise. Maitland slammed his gavel hard against the wooden bench until the crowd fell silent.

  ‘I know this is difficult, Ms Grimes,’ said Maitland, bending towards her, ‘but you must restrict your answer to the specific question you are asked. If there is anything you later wish to add, I’m sure that Mr Darnell will give you the opportunity to do it on redirect.’

  Roberts had made a mistake and he knew it. He moved to a different line of questioning, one that would not involve her feelings towards Benjamin Whitfield.‘There are just a few questions I want to ask you about what happened after the Evangeline sank.You told Mr Darnell that you asked Mr Marlowe to spare you because you were carrying a child. I understand that you now believe that he did that, that he made sure you were not chosen to be one of those who had to die; but he told you at the time that he could not do it because it would not be fair. Did I understand you correctly?’

  ‘He said he could not do it, that except for himself and Mr Offenbach, everyone had to be in it. But it was not true, of course, because he made sure the boy was chosen first and made sure I was not chosen at all. The important thing was that everyone believe that we were being treated the same, that we all had the same chance.’

  ‘Even though, as we now know, you did not?’

  ‘We had to believe that, believe that we were all doing what we had to so that there was at least the chance that some of us would survive.’

  ‘Because it was important, wasn’t it—Marlowe has said it was important—that everyone have the sense that there was something to be accomplished by their death; that death would have a meaning if it meant that others could live? Is that how you understood it?’ asked Roberts, an expression of the utmost certainty on his face.

  ‘Yes, that is exactly what I thought, what we all thought.’

  ‘And those who were chosen, whether chosen by chance or, like the boy, chosen on purpose—all of them met their deaths bravely, without resistance?’

  ‘Yes, all of them.’

  ‘My question, then, is why, if everyone was willing to sacrifice themselves for the others, no one thought to ask for volunteers? Instead of this lottery, instead of supposedly leaving it all to chance, why didn’t Marlowe call for volunteers? Why didn’t he just ask if someone wanted to die so that the others could live?’

  She had no answer, but an answer was not what he wanted. He had another question that would make his point even more dramatic.

  ‘Marlowe was in charge, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because Marlowe was the captain of the Evangeline, and the passengers were under his care?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why, if it was his duty to take care of all the rest, did not Marlowe volunteer—can you tell us that? Why did not Marlowe volunteer to be the first to die?’

  Cynthia Grimes looked at Roberts with open contempt.‘He did! You heard him! You heard what he said—that he could not go through with it, that he could not kill the boy, that he would have taken his place!’

  ‘Yes, but he did not do that, did he?’ said Roberts with a scornful look of his own.‘And whatever he may have said before he killed the boy, I don’t recall that he volunteered to take the place of any
of the others he killed—do you?’

  Darnell resisted the temptation to stop Roberts with a well-timed objection. He let him go on, working himself to a fever pitch, while he, Darnell, stared idly at the ceiling, like someone who has heard it all before and is not in the least impressed. He kept staring at the ceiling, as if he had fallen asleep with his eyes wide open, when Roberts finally finished. He was still staring at it when Homer Maitland peered down from the bench and asked if he had anything he wished to ask on redirect. Slowly, Darnell looked around, as if he had thought that Roberts was still at work, shouting invective at a young, pregnant witness. He stood up, smiled across at Cynthia Grimes and apologised, not for himself, but for what his ‘good friend, Mr Roberts, had been forced to do’.

  ‘It is one of the necessities of what we sometimes do as lawyers: try to beat an answer out of a witness who cannot possibly know what was going through another person’s mind. Mr Roberts wants to know why Mr Marlowe did not ask for volunteers. Isn’t it true, Ms Grimes, that that is exactly what Mr Marlowe did?’

  She wanted to be helpful, but the question did not seem to let her. ‘I’m not sure I…?’

  ‘What I mean is that, at the very beginning, when there were the first discussions of what you might have to do, everyone agreed to be bound by whatever the majority decided. This is another way of saying, if I’m not mistaken, that every one of you entered into that agreement voluntarily. Isn’t that true, Ms Grimes? Didn’t you, along with the others, agree that this had to be done, that someone had to sacrifice his or her life to save the lives of the others and, in that sense, volunteer as one of those who might be chosen? The point I am trying to make is quite simple,’ said Darnell with a modest, disarming smile. ‘No one was forced to die; everyone died of their own free will; everyone who met their death at Marlowe’s trembling and unwilling hand was in fact a volunteer. Is that the way you saw it?’