by Bill Cariad
Maria’s quick visual scan of the cut-price coliseum confirmed that Lady Holbrook had heeded her request to stay away. She also noted, but didn’t acknowledge in any way, the man called ‘Old Jock’ as on preparing to leave he caught her eye. Her own court-appointed legal knight, who had dismally failed to impress with his feeble presentation of events leading up to her husband’s death, was murmuring into his mobile phone and she half-listened to his pleased acceptance to something, somewhere, for the coming weekend. Finally, he turned his obviously reluctant attention back to her and she heard the scratch of impatience across his voice as he feigned interest in her understanding his summary of the verdict.
Maria Kennedy, nee Orsinni; twenty-seven year old daughter of Sicily; three months old widow of Tommaso Kennedy, understood only too well. Her husband was morto (dead) while his killer preened himself before her eyes. Throughout the past three years of married tenure; she had regularly felt the erratic pulse of her adopted country, often scarcely able to believe the reports she had read of lawlessness and the countless horror stories relating to man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. She had been repeatedly dumbfounded by the response of the British judiciary; governing, so far as she could tell, a so-called justice system whose only consistency seemed to be its inadequacy.
So she had chosen not to further line the pockets of an over-priced legal voice today, and instead had endured this charade in the full expectancy of an unsatisfactory outcome. Refusing him the reply she turned away from the ineffectual lawyer, dismissing him from her presence and her thoughts, and began her dry-eyed passage through the throng of people still entering and leaving the courtroom building. An explorer of the fanciful phrase might have described her as a deserted island of grief in a swelling uncaring sea, but, as any explorer of nature could tell you, a deserted island can be a deadly place.
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