The Lifeboat: A Novel

by Charlotte Rogan

  “Besides,” Mr. Reichmann continued, “we know that at least ten lifeboats were successfully launched. Mr. Hardie had a chance, albeit a small one, of finding his way into one of them. Is the chance of another plank in the first scenario any greater? And how are we to assess the chances of either scenario from this courtroom? What we are asking boils down to this question: Is the only way for a person who finds himself in an overcrowded lifeboat to avoid a guilty verdict to decide that all must sink or survive together? Is he permitted to make no move at all to save anyone, much less himself? And doesn’t such passivity fly directly in the face of human nature and the instinct to survive?”

  “I can imagine there might be some people who are noble enough to leave the lifeboat voluntarily,” said the prosecutor with an aggressive thrust of his pointed chin.

  “Could they ask for volunteers?” asked Mrs. Grant’s lawyer.

  “They can ask, I think, but they cannot require it,” said the prosecutor. “There can be no pressure or coercion at all.”

  The judge then asked if coercion arose merely in the asking and if there was a special duty assumed between a sailor and a passenger, and everybody agreed there was. “However, no such duty exists on the side of the passengers toward each other,” put in the lawyer for Mrs. Grant.

  “Or on the part of the passengers toward the crew,” added Mr. Reichmann gravely. “But I keep coming back to the notion that the question is more properly asked ‘Shall some live?’ rather than ‘Shall some die?’ If you take for granted that some or all shall die if no action is taken, should an action be taken to save some? That, I think, is the proper question, and I don’t see how you can fault my client for answering yes to that question, whether or not some other person might reasonably answer no.”

  The prosecutor said, “You assume there was some way of ascertaining whether the lives of some would actually be saved by any action the people in the boat might take. It was far more likely that life would only be prolonged than saved outright. Who could predict when the rescue might have occurred? Couldn’t it as easily have occurred one hour after the taking of some irrevocable decision as after a day or a week?”

  “You forget the storm,” said Mrs. Grant’s lawyer, who spoke glibly and seemed less prepared than the others. “That brought the necessity down to a particular moment. For one thing, there was no likelihood of a rescue during the storm, for even if a ship were in the vicinity, there would have been no way for it to either see or approach the lifeboat in the violent weather. And for another, the storm itself made destruction of the overcrowded boat likely if not certain. The storm reduced the situation in the lifeboat to that of the men on the plank by making the life-and-death struggle as immediate as if the occupants were already flailing about in the water.”

  “That may or may not be the case, but we are not now talking about the actions of Mr. Hardie,” said the prosecutor, pointing out a failure in the man’s logic that was obvious even to me. Until then, I had felt sorry for Hannah in her choice of the lawyer with the hinged neck, but now I felt sorry for Mrs. Grant, for her lawyer had forgotten that the storm was over by the time we killed Mr. Hardie, and indeed, the prosecutor went on to say, “Mr. Hardie was still in charge of things at the time of the storm. Whether or not his actions in arranging for the lottery were justifiable is open to question, but it is not a question this court has been convened to resolve.”

  “Quite right,” said Hannah’s lawyer. His too-long fingers fumbled through a sheaf of papers and extracted a particular one from the bottom of the stack. He held it up to the light, and a calculating look passed across his pale, oblong face. “But if Mr. Hardie’s actions can be condoned, then there might be grounds to condone the actions of the women, who were merely continuing a precedent set by someone else. Don’t forget that the lifeboat had been damaged in the storm and that it was still taking on water at a rapid rate.”

  “I don’t think the rate can be established,” said the prosecutor.

  “My point is that if emergency conditions existed in the case of the storm and in the case of the hypothetical plank, thereby allowing extreme courses of action, then such conditions also existed after the storm because of the damage sustained by the boat and the changed relationship between Mr. Hardie and the rest of the group. By proving himself willing to sacrifice occupants of the boat, Mr. Hardie had become an immediate threat.”

  By this time I had completely revised my opinion of Hannah’s lawyer, for he had taken the faulty logic of Mrs. Grant’s attorney and turned it to the advantage of us all. I could only admire his ability to see several steps ahead, when all I could do was to follow along behind the argument, hoping not to get lost in some byway of logic or law. Still, the man moved slowly and looked like he was made of putty, and I was glad that Mr. Reichmann, with his staunch bearing, alert features, and retinue of assistants, was representing me. The pale man was gaining steam as he spoke, so that despite his wan and, really, sickly appearance, his delivery became more and more impassioned. His washed-out face began to glow and the black pupils and pinkish whites of his eyes resembled the coals and embers of an inner fire. He concluded by saying: “And cannot the killing of Mr. Hardie be seen as the overthrow of a malevolent ruler—a despot, if you will—in that little principality, a tyrannical autocrat who was endangering the lives of the people in his charge?”

  The prosecutor replied, “But didn’t Mr. Hardie express a reluctance, even an absolute unwillingness, to take the lives of women? If so, how did his actions regarding the lottery constitute an implied threat?” to which my very own Mr. Reichmann responded, “What about Mrs. Cook? Didn’t Mr. Hardie, with his comments or suggestions, cause her to take her own life? And wasn’t he slow to rescue Rebecca Frost? Didn’t he, by those actions, include women in the list of people who were in immediate mortal danger due to his very presence in the boat?”

  The prosecutor was a nimble man who rushed his words together as if the wheels of justice were turning very quickly and he had to hurry to keep up. He was nearly breathless as he said, “We have contradictory statements regarding the events surrounding the death of Mrs. Cook, and as for Rebecca Frost, it is reckless to conjecture that Mr. Hardie purposely delayed in picking her up. In the telling of any story, it is possible to emphasize one particular aspect over another so that that aspect looms out of all proportion to the context.”

  After perhaps an hour of such dialogue, Judge Potter said, “In this discussion we, perhaps necessarily, keep straying from the general to the particular, and I must conclude that there is no general principle that can be derived to guide us in deciding whether or not it is generally permissible to jettison some passengers in order to save others. We must content ourselves with trying to decide whether it was permissible in this particular case, for the strange and anomalous facts of the situation are unlikely ever to be repeated. Each case must be decided upon its unique facts and merits and not by the application of some universal rule.” Thus the judge pronounced his jurisdiction over us. The majesty of the law was proclaimed, and we were cast upon its waters.

  Innocence

  PERHAPS IT WAS the theoretical discussion about the plank and the other lifeboat that started the rumor that Mr. Hardie was still alive. There was an item about it in the newspaper, which Mr. Glover brought to the prison for me to read in contravention of a rule against giving anything to an inmate that hadn’t been cleared in advance.

  “If it were true,” he said, “they couldn’t charge you with murder.”

  “Why not?” I asked, appalled by the idea that Mr. Hardie might have clawed his way to the surface and found his way to shore.

  “Because you wouldn’t have killed anyone!” he said with some surprise, and only when I had thought it through did I realize that he was right, that it was only Mr. Hardie’s death for which we were being prosecuted, not for the deaths of anyone else in the boat, though I must admit it sometimes felt as if we were being blamed for the entire incident, shipwreck
and all. When I understood what he was talking about, I was filled with irrational hope until I remembered how Hardie had repeatedly risen up in the water before he was finally lost to our sight. I could still see the black water dripping from his skeletal face. I could feel the wind sucking at my soul, and I didn’t think I could bear any sort of resurrection where Mr. Hardie was involved.

  “It’s a real possibility,” said Mr. Glover. “Some jewels that might be tied to the Empress Alexandra have surfaced in New York. Nothing at all is certain yet, but Mr. Reichmann has assigned me the task of investigating the report.”

  “If he is alive,” I said, “I doubt he is filled with goodwill toward any of us. I don’t imagine he’ll show up at the trial and say, ‘I’m not dead after all, so no harm done. You can let these women go.’”

  “No, I don’t suppose he will,” said Mr. Glover, “but he wouldn’t have to. The very fact of his being alive would be enough.”

  “I suppose we’d only be convicted of attempted murder, then,” I said. “What is the penalty for that? And wouldn’t Mr. Hardie be subject to prosecution himself? The judge made it very clear that as a member of the ship’s crew, he wasn’t supposed to ask people to jump overboard the way he did.” I didn’t say that Hardie was a wild man, perfectly useful in life-and-death situations, but unsuited to civilization. I didn’t say that he would protect those who submitted to his care but would have no qualms at all about murdering anyone else, and that we had long since broken the bond that made us one of that protected class. I did suggest, however, that Hardie might have other stories to tell, even lies, about what had happened to some of the others. “I wouldn’t look for him too hard,” I said, shivering in spite of myself. “After all, we did throw him out of the boat.”

  “You have a point there,” said Mr. Glover, looking at me with some concern. I realized that I was trembling uncontrollably and that Mr. Glover was unsure of how to calm me, so I said, “Even though I never want to lay eyes on Mr. Hardie again, I suppose I hope he is alive.” I said it because that is what I thought Mr. Glover wanted me to say. He would want me to say it because if Hardie were alive, it would mean I hadn’t killed anyone, and I strongly sensed Mr. Glover wanted to think of me without blood on my hands. Earlier that morning, I had considered asking him to look up Felicity Close and deliver a letter I had written to her, but I immediately thought better of it. I wanted to explain to her that I had loved Henry, that while his fortune is what had initially attracted me, I had loved him with all my heart. I wanted her to know this for Henry’s sake, not for mine. But my instincts about what to say and when to hold back have always been keen, so I said nothing to Mr. Glover about Felicity, and I later ripped up the letter and threw it away. Instead I repeated, “I certainly hope Mr. Hardie is alive!” as forcefully as I could, which freed Mr. Glover to lay a comforting hand on my arm.

  The next day, Mr. Reichmann came to the prison to ask me two questions. First, he wanted to know if I had helped to push Mr. Hardie out of the boat; and if the answer to that was yes, he wanted to know at what point I had decided to do it. “I think I helped to push him out,” I answered tentatively. I asked him if he had read my journal, which I had given him over a week before, and he replied that he had; but now he asked me to go through the events that led to Mr. Hardie’s death one more time, for he was confused about whether I had made my way into the back of the boat with the intention of helping Hannah or with the intention of helping Mr. Hardie. “Perhaps you started out with the idea of helping the man you admired and whom you credited with saving your life. Perhaps Mr. Hardie misread your intentions and started to struggle against you, and only then did your efforts shift to the support of Hannah.”

  “You are right in thinking that as I moved through the boat I was not at all clear on what I hoped to accomplish.”

  “So you moved almost automatically, as if you were following instructions?”

  “I don’t think it was automatic. I know I was thinking very hard at the time, wondering about the right thing to do.”

  “So you wanted to do the right thing.”

  “Yes! I wanted to help the person who…” I stopped myself, initially because I realized that I was going to sound very calculating if I said I wanted to help the person who had the most power in the boat. But I also became aware that Mr. Reichmann was looking at me oddly, with a mixture of amusement and fascination on his face, and it occurred to me that he had given me the answer to his question and was wondering what was taking me so long to realize it. When I stopped talking so abruptly, his face clouded with a shadow of irritation. But I couldn’t decide if it was irritation that I was slow to recognize the core of my defense or that I had caught myself before some truth escaped my lips. Or perhaps it was only irritation that the hour was getting late, for just then he took out his pocket watch, remarked on the time, and announced that he was late for a meeting with another client. “We must make better use of our time together,” he said, sounding very much like Dr. Cole, which in turn irritated me, for I did not like Dr. Cole, whereas I was beginning to admire Mr. Reichmann very much.

  “Sleep on it,” he said. “I think there is a very real possibility that you had no intention of participating in Mr. Hardie’s death and that you only decided to help Hannah at the last moment. If that is the case, it would be good to know before the hearing tomorrow. Tomorrow is when we have to enter our plea. Your codefendants plan to plead self-defense, which means that they admit to the killing, but contend that they only killed because they saw Mr. Hardie as a threat to their lives and to the lives of others. You must choose between not guilty by reason of self-defense and outright innocence. We will talk about it in the morning before we go to court.”

  I spent a restless night going over and over the incident in my mind, searching for anything I might have forgotten or for new ways to interpret the events of that day. There was no question that Hannah and Mrs. Grant intended to kill Mr. Hardie. As for their claim that he had put us all in danger, I can only say that that argument was the only one they could make. Was it true? We were in grave danger, but had Mr. Hardie’s actions become a part of that danger? I think that once the two women had declared themselves against him, a dangerous situation existed in the boat, but was the blame for that really Hardie’s or was it the fault of the two women for pushing an opposing point of view? And if it was the fault of the two women, did that mean that the only justifiable course of action for them would have been to sit passively in the boat and do what they were told, without anything to say about the best way to get ourselves rescued? But in the end, that was not the question I had to decide. I had only to decide what Mr. Reichmann should tell the judge on my behalf.

  At the courthouse the next morning, I was the one worried about the time. The hearing was set to begin at ten o’clock, but by quarter to ten, Mr. Reichmann had yet to arrive. Hannah and Mrs. Grant had gone off to conference rooms with their attorneys, and I was left to sit on a bench in a long hallway with the matron, alternately certain that Mr. Reichmann would do nothing to jeopardize my case and filled with misgivings and doubt. “Where is my attorney?” I asked the matron over and over again; and over and over she answered me in her kind Irish voice, “He’ll be here. I know Mr. Reichmann, and he is as reliable as they come.” When he finally appeared, I swallowed my mounting anger and said, “Are you all right? I worried that some accident had befallen you!”

  He was all smiles, with none of the mixed signals of the day before. “Don’t worry, the hearing has been rescheduled for noon,” he told me as he placed his briefcase on the floor by his feet. It seemed that someone might have informed me of the change, but I was so filled with relief that I soon forgot the anguish his tardiness had caused me. The matron left us alone, and he sat next to me on the bench and said, “Have you thought about what I asked you?” in such a way that I again sensed there was a correct answer to the question, and I was momentarily confused about what I was expected to say. I ended by telling him th
e truth, and I fervently hoped it coincided with what he wanted to hear. I looked into his eyes, which were no longer filled with amusement, but seemed to be deep, dark pools of concern, and said, “When I went toward Mr. Hardie and Hannah, I was not at all sure what I was going to do. I think I was seeking some course of action that would restore the atmosphere in the lifeboat to what it had been before Mrs. Grant sought to prove that Mr. Hardie was guilty of something. Of course that was folly on my part, for what could I, who was no match for any one of them, do to heal the rift that had opened and that threatened us all?”

  “So we plead innocent!” cried Mr. Reichmann, slapping his hand on his thigh. Seeing him so pleased with me made me happy in a strange way, but my happiness was clouded by a weird sensation that I was in the lifeboat again, that I was again choosing without really knowing the consequences of my choice; but the sensation was fleeting, and I walked calmly into the courtroom, glad that there was nothing more I needed to do, glad that I could now sit back and let Mr. Reichmann do his work.

  Throughout the fall and winter, Mr. Glover continued to smuggle in articles about the wreck of the Empress Alexandra. Once, he brought me what was thought to be a complete list of the survivors, and while Hardie’s name was absent, we agreed that there was no way of accounting for someone who didn’t want to be found. Another time, he brought me an article that focused on the crew of the sunken ship. The article went on at some length about Captain Sutter, who had spent most of his forty-two years at sea and who had left behind a wife and two daughters. Just as my heart was clenching with sympathy on the daughters’ behalf, the name Brian Blake jumped out at me from where it had been lying in wait a few sentences farther along. I asked Mr. Glover to let me keep the paper and promised not to implicate him if the matron were to find it in my possession. When he had gone, I sat staring at the section I have transcribed here until it was time for supper.