Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  “I think you’ve done that already, or am I not seeing this correctly? Aren’t these children being detained? Isn’t that officer holding handcuffs? I seem to have gotten here in the nick of time—and not just for their sakes, but for yours, too. Imagine the hullabaloo that would have ensued if anything more serious had happened.”

  Natalie and I looked at each other again. Hullabaloo?

  “It’s just procedure,” said the cop with the handcuffs.

  “You can tell that to the judge. Are these three children free to leave with me? If yes, then we’ll be going, thank you. If not, then I’ll be heading off to federal court and filing an emergency petition for a writ of habeas corpus.”

  “Calm down, Stephen. Maybe we should talk alone.”

  “Let me take these children home now, and once they are safe in their bedrooms with their stuffed animals and their mothers, then you and I can chat all you want.”

  Natalie smiled widely at me and mouthed the words stuffed animals. I shrugged.

  “But if you decide to keep them a minute longer, then the talk we’ll be having will be in a deposition, under oath, and it won’t be so cordial. Your decision, Chief.”

  There was a moment when the chief, unsure of what to do, looked at his uniformed officers. I looked just at Stephen. I couldn’t have been more flabbergasted if he had been standing there with long black hair and a leather jacket, playing an electric guitar with fireworks shooting out its neck.

  Or more proud.

  It wasn’t until we were out of the township building that I noticed the tremble in my stepfather’s hand or the way his eyes darted from side to side like two nervous fish. He had been solid as a tree trunk inside Chief Johansson’s office, but now he was shaky as a leaf in a windstorm.

  “Stephen?” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “Keep walking,” he said with tight lips. “If they’re looking out the window, everything should be as calm as a Sunday stroll.”

  “But we don’t take Sunday strolls,” I said.

  “I think we should start, don’t you? It would be a nice family thing. The bright sun, the fresh air. Nature.”

  “But I hate nature.”

  “We’ll begin this weekend.”

  “It was way cool how you laid it on that cop, Mr. Scali,” said Natalie. “You were like…like…”

  “A rock star?” I said.

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Natalie. “A rock star.”

  “Thank you, Natalie, though I don’t think I have the hair for it. But I must say, I never stormed into a police chief’s office and threatened his job before. We don’t do such things in patent law.”

  “What does a patent lawyer do?” said Henry.

  “We protect intellectual property, Henry, and intellectual property is the cornerstone of the American economy. Did you know that provisions for the protection of intellectual property were placed directly into the United States Constitution as a—”

  “How did you know we were there?” I said, interrupting what I knew would be the most boring lecture in the history of mankind.

  “Natalie’s mother.”

  “And how did she know?”

  “Well,” said Natalie, “to be honest, I might have texted her.”

  “You texted your mother? I thought you didn’t get along with your mother. All you do is complain about her.”

  “But we were in trouble,” said Natalie. “And she’s my mother. Who else was I going to text?”

  “And she immediately called your mother, Lizzie, who gave me a call,” said Stephen. “The point is, Natalie, that you got in touch with a responsible adult and your mother saved the day. Well done on everybody’s part.”

  As Natalie beamed, I took a look at Stephen. He was still nervous—his eyes were still a pair of darting minnows—and he looked just then like anything other than a hero, but he had come through just when things had turned major-league creepy inside Chief Johansson’s office. And the thing was, as soon as I recognized his voice, I knew that he would.

  After we dropped off Henry and Natalie at their houses, I asked Stephen a question on our way home. “When we were in that office you threatened Chief Johansson with some sort of lawyer word.”

  “Habeas corpus,” said Stephen, saying the words with a deep important voice. “The great writ.”

  “It sounds like a magic spell.” I waved my hands in the air. “Habeas corpus.”

  “It is a little magical, I must say,” said my stepfather. “If someone is being held in a prison, a habeas corpus petition requires the prisoner be brought before the court and forces whoever is doing the imprisoning to show why the prisoner is being locked up. It came into being something like seven hundred years ago when kings would routinely imprison whomever they wanted. That doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So they created the writ of habeas corpus to be a check on the power of the king. It has become the cornerstone of a free society.”

  “There seem to be a lot of cornerstones floating around.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No. Well, yes. But not really. Thank you for doing what you did.”

  “Family, right?

  “Sure, yeah, whatever.”

  “Elizabeth, I might only be your stepfather, but you’ve always been nothing less than my daughter. When I married your mother I knew you were part of the package, and I accepted that and everything it meant.”

  “We all have our crosses to bear.”

  “Yes, we do, but then you turned out to be you.”

  “Yeah, well, sorry about that.”

  “No, you don’t get it. You turned out to be you, which is more than I could ever have hoped for. More funny, more surly and sarcastic, more smart, more loving to your brother—”

  “Stop it,” I said, not sure if I was talking to him, with all his tender dad talk, or the tears that were welling. Maybe it was a natural reaction to the tension of the moment in the chief’s office, but maybe it was something else, too. Maybe what happened to me when I became a barrister in the Court of Uncommon Pleas didn’t just happen to me. Maybe it happened to everyone. Change one person, change the world.

  “Okay, you’re right,” said Stephen. “I’ll stop the sappy talk. Your mother told me you were looking into some murder that happened before you were born.”

  “She told you that?”

  “We’re married, Elizabeth. We tell each other things.”

  Not everything, I thought.

  “So,” he said, “what did you find that caught the interest of our chief of police?”

  “Nothing, really. From the newspaper articles, we learned there was some kind of fight between the victim’s sister and the old boyfriend. We already talked to the sister and were trying to talk to the old boyfriend when the police grabbed us. Something was going on back then, and I think the chief’s brother might have been involved, or even the chief himself.”

  “Really? The chief? When did this murder happen?”

  “Fifty years ago.”

  “How old was he then? Nine or so?”

  “Something like that.”

  “A likely suspect, if the murder was committed with baseball cards and bubble gum. And what do you know about the brother?”

  “Not a thing. But we don’t know where else to look.”

  “You mentioned some articles in the paper.”

  “Yeah, we looked them up on microfilm.”

  “You can sue a newspaper for something called libel if it prints stuff that’s untrue, which means newspapers try to print only what they can prove.”

  “Another cornerstone?”

  “When the law is falling on your head, it all feels like a cornerstone.”

  I laughed. “So?”

  “Well,” he said, “it means newspaper editors are always saying, ‘We can’t put this in, we can’t put that in.’”

  “So you think we should talk to the reporter?” I said. �
��And find out if there was anything she discovered that her editor wouldn’t let her print?”

  “It might not be a total waste. But finding her after all these years won’t be so easy.”

  “We’ll find her,” I said. “We’ll put Natalie on it. It turns out she’s a total bloodhound.”

  My grandfather was somewhere behind the piles of paper and stacks of legal books that teetered on his desk when Avis announced my presence.

  “Elizabeth has come back to us,” she squawked. “Your granddaughter has returned.”

  “Of course she’s returned,” came my grandfather’s voice. “She is part of the firm now. We need to change the sign on the door. Find a new name. Maybe Webster and Son and Son’s Daughter. It has a ring, no?”

  “No,” said Avis. “No ring.”

  “Seat her at the desk, you grumpy grouse, and get back to work. And where is the Wedderburn petition? I’ve been waiting all day for the Wedderburn petition.”

  “It’s been here the entire time,” said Avis, before snatching a document from one of the piles and holding it out.

  An aged hand reached through the piles and grabbed the document. “It’s about time you found this thing. Wedderburn has just molted. He is ravenous. He needs to feed. Now leave us be.”

  Avis glanced my way and shook her head in two quick twists, left, then right, before skittering out of the office.

  “And close the door!” shouted my grandfather.

  The door slammed shut.

  “That woman,” said my grandfather as I heard a chair scrape backward. “We get more done in the winter when she heads south than we do while she’s here.”

  The bang of his cane on the floor let me know he was coming my way. Bang, bang. And then from behind the mountainous piles on his desk he appeared, his back bent, his wild white eyebrows masking his eyes, the Wedderburn petition in his hand.

  “Fact-check this for me, will you?” he said as he waved the document at me. “See to it quickly, before Wedderburn starts snacking on necks again. The last time that happened, it took the nation years to recover. That, of course, was the great molt of 1929 and the results, as you can imagine, were calamitous. After the petition is fact-checked and citations are added, it needs to be filed.”

  “I don’t know how to do any of that,” I said.

  “Then learn.” The cane rapped the floor. “You are now a barrister before the Court of Uncommon Pleas. That is a position of grave responsibility. Ask Barnabas for help, if need be. He knows how to do everything.”

  “Grandpop,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, but be quick about it. Wedderburn is uncommonly hungry at this time of the year.”

  “If Barnabas knows how to do everything, why isn’t he a lawyer himself?”

  “He was, many years ago, but is no longer permitted to stand before the court. Now he is a simple clerk, an indentured servant of the firm.”

  “What did he do wrong?”

  “It’s not what he did, my sweet, it’s what was done to him.”

  “When Barnabas saved me from that statue in City Hall, he acted as if the monster couldn’t hurt him.”

  “You have a good eye, Elizabeth, a Webster’s eye. That is all true, yes. It’s a terrible story, quite unfortunate, really.” He tapped his cane on the floor twice. Bang, bang. “So now, let’s get to work. Wedderburn awaits.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me the story?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I want to hear it?”

  “You want to hear his story? How extraordinary. Well, I suppose Wedderburn can wait a few minutes. I’ll have Avis ship him a couple of ferrets from her pantry, that should keep him fed for a while longer. Now sit.”

  I took a seat behind the little desk as my grandfather, tapping his cane hard upon the floor, made his way to the great portrait of Daniel Webster atop the fireplace. He straightened up as best he could. One hand leaned on the cane, the other patted his breast as if he were about to give a speech to the masses.

  “It all began,” said my grandfather grandly, “when Barnabas passed into the other world.”

  “What does that mean, to pass into the other world?”

  “For that you need to hear the entirety of the story. Buckle up your shoes, Elizabeth, the ride is about to get wee bit rough.”

  There was once a lawyer, practicing in a county called Sussex, on the southern coast of Britain. This was in Victorian England, the era of the Brontë sisters and Ebenezer Scrooge. Our lawyer, tall, handsome, and brooding, perfectly fit his times. He was much admired by the women of the town where he lived, but he kept his distance, preferring solitude to formal dress balls. Walking alone along the high chalk cliffs of the shoreline in his boots and tailcoat, his hands clasped behind him as the wind whipped through his long, dark hair, he would gaze out at the sea, as if seeking a ship on the horizon. This, of course, was our Barnabas, the second, and therefore penniless, son of Lord Bothemly, late of East Anglia.

  One afternoon, a young woman named Isabel hesitantly entered Barnabas’s office. Isabel’s family had married her off while still in her teens to a rich old scoundrel named Cutbush, who showed only brutality to his young bride. Isabel had no idea what to do or to whom to turn, and so she came to Barnabas seeking her freedom. In those days, while it was a rather simple matter for a man to divorce his wife, it was much more difficult for a woman to divorce her husband. And even worse, Isabel had no money of her own and thus would be unable to pay the lawyer any fees. It was a hopeless enterprise, but Barnabas, seeing the pain in the woman’s eyes, and understanding his duties as an attorney, agreed to take the case.

  The course of law in England ran quite slowly in those years, and for many months Barnabas and Isabel worked together on the case. To get her divorce, Isabel had to prove both that Cutbush had cheated and that he had treated her cruelly. In the course of their work, Barnabas grew to admire Isabel’s quickness of mind and the detached way she dealt with the most horrific matters of her married life. He once told her she had the soul of a lawyer, which, to Barnabas, was the highest of compliments. And Isabel grew to admire not just Barnabas’s technical mastery of the law but also the streak of idealism that lay beneath it. In their time together, as these things tend to happen, the two fell deeply in love. Even so, Barnabas refused to act on his emotions, or even to so much as acknowledge them, while Isabel was still a client. There were rules against such things. There still are.

  The proceedings in the case of Cutbush v. Cutbush were lengthy and bitter. It was unclear until the very end how the judge would rule. When the divorce was conditionally granted, it took another six months for it to become final and absolute, and in this period both lawyer and client avoided one another. If the wife committed adultery in the six-month period the divorce would be voided. But after the six months, Isabel was officially divorced from Cutbush. Upon hearing the news from her counsel, she stiffly discharged him from her employ.

  The very next moment they fell into each other’s arms.

  The happiness that flowed into both their lives gave them each a golden glow that was noted all across the county. Not since Romeo and Juliet was a love so pure and heartfelt, said the townsfolk. Together the couple walked along the coastline, Barnabas no longer looking across the sea as if for some long-delayed ship, but instead into Isabel’s dark brown eyes. There he found, for the first time in his life, true happiness. And for Isabel, being with Barnabas was like being reborn into a magical world wrapped in love.

  One afternoon, on a blustery day, as the waves crashed menacingly upon the great rocks beneath the tall, pale cliffs, the lawyer fell to a knee and begged Isabel for her hand in marriage. She gave it wholeheartedly. Together they strolled arm in arm back to the village, their future promising nothing but joy and love, when, from behind a tree, Cutbush appeared and shot Barnabas right in his heart.

  Dead is as dead does, and Barnabas was now dead.

  Isabel
was inconsolable. She refused to speak at the funeral, or at the subsequent murder trial, or even at Cutbush’s hanging. She stayed mute as misery gripped tight her wounded heart. She spent hours walking alone across the same high, rocky cliffs Barnabas had paced, standing tall and angular, staring out at the sea as if searching for her beloved in the waves. It was during one of these walks that an old woman with a black shawl came passing by and instructed Isabel, without a word of explanation, to follow her. Isabel did.

  The old woman lived in a shack on the edge of a dark wood. She indicated for Isabel to sit at a rickety old table. The old woman sat across from her.

  “You are grieving, my child,” said the old woman.

  Isabel nodded.

  “Your betrothed has been taken to the other side and you miss him terribly.”

  Isabel nodded again.

  “What if I told you,” said the old woman, “that I could send you to him, and in so doing allow you to return your betrothed to this side of the great divide, to once again walk across these bleak yet lovely cliffs?”

  For the first time since the tragedy, Isabel spoke. “I’d do anything.”

  “Think, my lovely girl. Anything? The sacrifice could be greater than you can imagine.”

  “Anything,” said Isabel.

  The old woman leaned forward and kissed Isabel on the forehead before rising. She brewed a special tea and chanted over the bubbling liquid as she dashed in herbs and berries and squirmy little creatures. When she was finished, she ladled some of the potion into a flowered cup and placed it before the shaking girl.

  “They say you two were like Romeo and Juliet,” said the old woman. “It is time to prove it.”

  Isabel drank her bitter tea, and quick as that she vanished from the earth.

  “Where did she go?” I asked, in the middle of my grandfather’s story.

  “Where do you think?” said my grandfather with a wink.

  My eyes opened embarrassingly wide and I whispered, “The other world?”

  “Precisely,” said my grandfather. “It is time you know what you are dealing with as a member of this firm. Our lives are like a voyage by train, and this world is but one of the many stops on the journey. For some the stop is short and painful, for others it is long and joyous, but for all of us, the time comes when we must step back onto that train and head for the next station. That station is the other world.”