Red Mass

by Rosemary Aubert

  I released the catch and extended the shelf. On it, I placed a single sheet of paper. From a short distance away and upside down, it appeared to be a succinct outline of a brief address. From a shorter distance and right side up, it could actually be seen as a list of the day’s selection of luncheon dishes in the Barristers’ Dining Room. All the jury knew was that I respected their time by planning my remarks and keeping them short.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” I started, “I do not have an extensive opening statement to make to you. I intend to let my client’s case unfold before you in a logical, I might almost say natural, fashion. You will hear three witnesses in defense of the innocent man who has sat here all these days listening to false charges against his honor, his integrity and—most ignominiously—against the great love he bore for his wife. You will hear from each of these witnesses exactly how Supreme Court Justice John Stoughton-Melville tended to the woman he loved. You will hear of his devotion, which began decades ago when Harpur Stoughton-Melville was a beauty and a legal genius in sui juris, that is, in her own right. And you will see, as these witnesses have seen, that Justice Stoughton-Melville did not waver in his love and his devotion despite the passage of years and the devastation wrought by a cruel and unrelenting disease.”

  I paused, scanned the faces of the men and women before whom I stood. This close, I could tell that several jurors had already made up their minds. These jurors did not look open, inquisitive, curious. Indeed, they looked determined, as if they had heard all they wanted to hear. Had Ellen convinced them, so that they were simply marking time, waiting to find Stow guilty?

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I have but a single thought to put before you, and a single request. All I want you to think about is whether a man who so loved his wife”—I pointed to Stow—“whether that man could kill her. And all I want to ask of you is that you listen to his defense.”

  I might have added, I’ll be all ears myself.

  I sat down, signaled to Nicky to take over and surreptitiously wiped my brow on my gown.

  The first witness was a Ms. Myra DeCosta, chief supervisor of the nurses who tended to Harpur during the final days of her life. Nicky’s examination-in-chief lasted half an hour. DeCosta was a pleasantly plump woman with a rosy complexion and a matronly manner. Nicky, handsome, tall and lean in his black robe, black vest, gray legal-stripe trousers and white linen shirt with tabbed collar, looked like a nineteenth-century print of an English barrister. His examination was akin to a polite son asking questions of his cooperative mother. The image Nicky tried to convey of Stow was that of a husband who would spare no effort in the service of his beloved wife.

  “Did Judge Stoughton-Melville visit often?” Nicky asked.

  “Oh yes, Mr. McPhail.”

  “Did you actually see them together—Mr. and Mrs. Stoughton-Melville, I mean?”

  “All the time. He would come by private plane and limo very early in the morning, and he stayed until very late at night. Sometimes he even had a bed brought in so he could stay overnight with her.”

  “Did you ever see Justice Stoughton-Melville express any impatience with his wife? Any shortness of temper?”

  The woman gravely shook her gray-haired head. “No, sir,” she answered. “Never.”

  “Thank you, madame,” Nicky told her, turning the floor over to Ellen.

  “Ms. DeCosta,” Ellen said, “you’ve been a nurse for a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” the witness answered. Her smiling manner had given way to frostiness.

  “How long?”

  “Over thirty years,” the woman answered.

  “And in that time you’ve had the opportunity to observe quite a range of human behavior, have you not?”

  The witness eyed Ellen warily. “I guess you could say that,” she answered after a pause.

  “And,” Ellen went on, “you’ve noticed, I imagine, that visitors and family members can sometimes act one way toward a patient when being watched and quite another way when they think they aren’t being watched. Correct?”

  While the witness thought about that, I sneaked a look at the jury. A couple of them were paying very close attention to the witness’s obvious struggle to find the right words.

  At last the witness spoke. “You know, Miss,” she said, “having a beloved family member suffer from a lingering and incurable illness is one of the hardest things a family can face. Of course, people sometimes lose their temper. Of course they act rude once in a while, or speak sharply. Nobody likes to see that, but everybody understands. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Ellen. “Nine times out of ten, when a family member loses patience with an ill, elderly relative, no harm comes of it. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” the witness responded, “I am.”

  “So then, one time out of ten, that is, 10 percent of the time, one of the patients in your care is seriously, shall we way inconvenienced by the impatience or anger of a visitor?”

  The witness looked genuinely surprised. I hoped the jury noticed that surprise. I could not risk looking over to them again. I kept my eyes lowered as the witness soldiered on.

  “That’s not what I meant at all,” she said. “I never in my whole career had a visitor harm one of my patients—or call them names or yell at them, either. Never.”

  “But you can’t know, can you, what a visitor might do to a patient when you’re not looking?”

  I could see Nicky tapping his long white fingers on his notes. If Ellen could get this witness to admit that even once in a while relatives of patients might lose control when faced with certain frustrations, all Nicky’s work with the witness would be nullified.

  But Nurse DeCosta was made of sterner stuff. “Listen, Miss,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to say, but I’m telling you right now, I’ve seen Justice Stoughton-Melville early in the morning, and in the middle of the day, and at night when I’ve been the only nurse on duty, and I never—I say never—saw him treat his wife in any way that I wouldn’t like to be treated my own self.”

  “No further questions.”

  The Crown fared no better with the next witness, the recruiter of volunteers, who had, he said, personally screened most of the nonprofessional caregivers who had worked to make Harpur’s last days as comfortable as possible. “They were all wonderful,” he said, “including Mr. Portal there.”

  “Mr. Portal?” Ellen asked. “Mr. Portal visited Mrs. Stoughton-Melville?”

  I cringed. What was Ellen doing now? If she had a notion to incriminate me in the case, I might as well give up on my rehabilitation and take to the valley again. Suddenly, the idea had great appeal.

  “Mr. Portal knew Mrs. Stoughton-Melville’s husband very well,” the witness replied. “They went to law school together, I believe.”

  Ellen nodded and let the statement pass. I glanced at McKenzie. He had the look of a man who had considered making a statement but decided against it.

  This witness, like the previous one, had so many good things to say about Stow’s kindness and devotion that Ellen wisely kept her cross-examination short. When she finished, it was 11:15, time for morning break.

  I made a great show of studying my notes as the jury and the judge left the courtroom. All members of the public were ushered out also, and no one remained in the courtroom except for the accused, his guards and the defense. I crossed the few steps between my counsel table and the prisoner’s dock.

  I leaned down and put my ear to Stow’s lips. I was surprised when he said, “Thanks for seeing me through this, Portal. I’m ready now. Put me on and don’t ask a litany of inconsequential and misleading questions. I want you to ask me one thing and one thing only.”

  As much as I had longed for instruction from Stow all these weeks, I now deeply resented his sudden decision to take over the case. When I knew he was a guilty sham? However, when I heard the question itself, I realized we might get out of this alive, wit
h both our reputations intact. “Just ask me what happened the night I lost my wife.”

  The judge returned, then Ellen, then the jury. In the body of the court, the reporters sat with pens and various small electronic devices at the ready. Aliana was still missing, but my family—Anne, looking pale, apprehensive and fragile, Ellen’s husband, Angelo, Tootie and Jeffrey—sat together like a resolute cheering squad. Exactly which team they were rooting for remained to be seen.

  Near the rear door sat two beefy officers from the federal prison, Stow’s usual escorts on the trip up from and back to Fernhope. Weird. I had never seen them in the courtroom before.

  An air of hushed expectancy suffused the court. Even the brush of the hem of my robe against the counsel table seemed to echo in the huge room.

  “I call Mr. John Stoughton-Melville to the stand,” I stated, marveling at the authoritative and sonorous voice

  I was able to muster in the midst of counsel’s greatest fear, putting a witness on the stand whose answers are unknown to him. I heard the door to the prisoner’s box unlatched by one of the guards. And Stow’s step as he climbed down onto the broadloom that covered the floor of this courtroom from the bar to the bench. A guard poured him a drink of water, then stepped back while my client swore on the Bible to tell the truth before God and the court.

  “Good morning, Mr. Stoughton-Melville,” I said, but Stow said nothing in return. For one anguished moment, it occurred to me that he had changed his faulty mind again and decided to continue as he had begun, by refusing to talk. McKenzie would not hesitate to let both of us have a piece of his mind, and on the record, too. Contempt charges would follow.

  Weakly, I began my questioning.

  “We’ve heard a lot of testimony over the past few days, Mr. Stoughton-Melville, and during that time, you have had to listen to the allegations against you without having the opportunity to say anything about those allegations.”

  He glared at me as if saying, “Get to the point, you fool.” I intended to do as he had instructed, to ask the one simple question, but I needed an introduction, a lead-in to make the transition.

  “But now, sir,” I told him, “the time has come to state your own case, to tell the jury the real meaning of the evidence they have heard, the real events of December 26, the real reason Harpur Blane Stoughton-Melville died.”

  At the mention of Harpur’s name, I noticed a small shift in Stow’s demeanor, his face momentarily softening. But quickly it regained its harsh immobility.

  “Are you prepared to do that now, sir? Prepared to tell us exactly what happened the night your wife died?”

  Slowly Stow nodded. I glanced at the jury. A few were looking at the floor, embarrassed. Others seemed prepared to leap from their seats.

  “Mr. Stoughton-Melville,” I said more assertively, “I want you to begin at the beginning. Tell us firstly whether you visited Harpur Stoughton-Melville, your wife, on the day she died.”

  “Yes.”

  His voice was soft now, like that of an old or defeated man. I could sense the jurors leaning closer almost as one.

  “Speak up, please.”

  Again he glared at me. I couldn’t see how treating me with a lack of respect would improve his position in the eyes of the jury, but I gave him a big smile back. He looked a little surprised.

  “Yes,” he said strongly. “Yes. I did visit my wife on the last day of her life.”

  “Did you go directly to her room when you entered Riverside Hospital that day?”

  “No.”

  Now it was I who was surprised. I struggled not to show it.

  “Okay,” I said, “please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury exactly where you went before you entered Harpur’s room.”

  I remembered now what little Angelo had said about a judge being able to speak however long he wanted to speak in court. Let Stow talk, I thought. There’s nothing else you can do anyway.

  “I parked the car just as the Crown’s witness said I did,” Stow began. “It was a rental car because my own was under repair. That day was the day after Christmas.” He looked up, and I could swear he looked straight at Anne. “Harpur always loved Christmas,” he said. “It meant little to me, but I knew that the Christmas of which I speak would be her last, so when in one of her lucid moments she asked for our traditional forty-foot tree, our golden ornaments to be put up as they had always been, I made sure her wishes were met.

  “But she was not at home on Christmas morning. In fact, she was taken to Riverside for the last time a few days before Christmas Eve, and she never saw our home again.

  “I left Ottawa specifically to be with her—closed up my office there and left word that I would be detained indefinitely in Toronto. On the day in question, I entered the lobby of Riverside Hospital early in the afternoon. I had a purpose—almost, you might say, a mission.”

  He paused, and his eyes took on the opaque glaze of ice. “You see,” he went on, “I had made Harpur a promise.” He lifted his hand. In the bright light of the courtroom, I saw again the same gold ring that I wore myself. “Long ago,” Stow said, pointing to the ring, “I swore on this ring that my wife could ask a favor of me and that I would not deny it, no matter how grave. At the beginning of her illness, when she was still nearly in full possession of her faculties, she exacted that promise from me. She made me promise that I would make sure that she died with dignity.”

  Stow stopped. The silence in the courtroom was so intense, so complete, that it was unmarred by anyone drawing a breath.

  “On the day after Christmas,” he resumed, “I went to Riverside Hospital with the express purpose of carrying out that promise. I had thought about the matter long and hard during the empty hours in which I sat in the home that Harpur and I had made together, the home in which we had lived for nearly forty years. I decided that my life meant nothing to me if Harpur could not share it. I decided to lay everything I was and everything I had on the line. I decided there was only one way in which I could keep my promise. Daily, Harpur had become less and less the woman I loved. Gone was the fire, the defiance, the will stronger than I’d encountered in anyone else. Gone was her ability to understand in an instant the most complex concepts, the most compelling ideas. And gone, too, was her remarkable beauty, a footnote to her tragedy.”

  I listened to this slick speech with disgust. I had never heard Stow sound so personal, so ... perhaps the term was intimate. He was leading toward some sort of self-incriminating admission, which could prove fatal to his defense. Every listener except me was spellbound, including McKenzie himself.

  Stow continued, “I knew that Harpur was receiving a great deal of medication. It had been explained to me, but I remembered only a little of what I had been told. One thing I did remember, however, was that she sometimes received a drug that made it easier for her to breathe—and also easier to stop her from breathing under certain circumstances. I also knew that the drug was kept under lock and key in the drug repository on the floor beneath Harpur’s floor. I knew this because Harpur herself had told me.” He stopped again and drew in a ragged breath that ended in a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob. I looked toward the jury box. All twelve were riveted.

  “In her more lucid moments, Harpur told me that the door to the vault was sometimes left open for brief periods during the change of nursing shifts. I realized that Harpur had made it her business to know these facts. On the afternoon of December 26, unfortunately, Harpur herself was no longer in control. It was time to fulfill my promise to her ...”

  “Stow—” I interrupted. I had to stop him. I could not allow my client to make an admission of guilt, a confession. Especially under circumstances in which he appeared distraught. “Stow, please wait ...”

  He was so wound up nothing could stop him.

  “I went to the drug vault. I stole a tray of syringes. I wanted to do as Harpur had asked. I wanted to end her misery, and then my own. I grabbed the drugs and made for the stairs. Nobody saw me in th
e stairwell. I didn’t know that there were other stairwells and that someone might be approaching Harpur’s room from another direction.” He shook his head. “No, I didn’t even think about that at all, because I was hurrying, my intensity at its peak. But just as I reached Harpur’s door, someone—a man—crashed into me, scattering the syringes. I saw in an instant that the man was Ellis Portal and assumed that he recognized me.

  “But he didn’t say anything. He was so deep in thought that he didn’t seem to see me at all. His sudden presence on the scene, however, caused me to lose my nerve. I left the syringes and I fled. When I learned that Harpur had indeed died that night, I realized that Ellis Portal had the same reasons to put Harpur to death as I. Five of us made the same promise to each other.” Stow spoke directly to me now, his voice strong and vindictive. “You always loved her, loved her as much as I ...”

  The jury gasped. So did the body of the court. Ellen rose, but she sat down again as though no objection occurred to her. McKenzie was scratching his head, as though he was searching for a precedent for this situation. Nicky had turned pale.

  I should have known. I should have seen it coming. I should have realized that Stow would try to pin Harpur’s death on me, the Italian bricklayer’s boy who had risen above his station not once, but twice.

  In those frozen moments, I stood in awe of my enemy. Yes, I had loved Harpur. A man loves many things he can’t have. Or can’t keep. Like my law career, my honor, my reputation, my naive belief that the past was behind me, done and gone, and that I finally had a future as a decent, ordinary man. Finally, I had no defense against Stow. I was in Harpur’s room the night she died. Someone had phoned. Someone had heard my voice. For all I knew, I was the last person to see her alive. The police had found those syringes. No one’s fingerprints could be proved to be on them. No one’s fingerprints could be proved to be absent.